Chapter 1: Conrad Gets a Gift
Notes:
The next step of Conrad's adventure begins, and his insistence he's just an unremarkable background character has never been so strained. Gremlins, gang politics, wannabe supervillains, magic, and what's needed to make Con take shit seriously are all lined up for offering.
But that's going to take awhile to lay out such the biggest plot holes are avoided, so enjoy this quick teaser to wet your appetite. Consider it that bit of the show that sets everything up before they cut to the opening credits at a dramatic moment.
(Mini)Chapter specific CWs in the End Notes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
True to his word, the first thing Red Hood handed him as he walked through the loading dock gates the next day was a small black metal disc that felt far too heavy and solid for it’s poker chip size.
“A panic button.” He explained as Con turned the thing over in his hand, both of them strenuously ignoring the dozen or so others who’s start-of-the-night prep-work had coincidentally required them to linger within casual eavesdropping distance. “Push it three times or more in a second and it’ll sound off an alert right to my helmet, along with activating a GPS beacon.”
“In case anyone decides I’m a good weak link to extract information from via rooftop dangling.” Conrad tried to sound casual - rather, Conrad was sounding casual - but that didn’t stop the faintest of blushes from darkening his cheeks. He’d had boyfriends and would-be lovers kick off their relationships with anything from stolen jewelry,
A lovely pair of diamond and gold ear studs that he’d still wear if his piercings didn’t keep closing up without a trace. They’d recently been moved to a larger box to sit with Ned’s recovered picture.
to copious amounts of cheep booze,
Handed to him directly from the back of a freshly hijacked delivery truck. And sure, it was mainly because Tucker couldn’t carry everything away from his haul and didn’t have anyplace to park it if he tried driving it home, but it was Con’s favorite brand, and more of it than he could comfortably carry, so it counted as thoughtful.
to thousand dollar light-up sneakers,
Which he took off the moment he was out of sight and stuffed into the bottom of his backpack. Because out of everything you could gift a penniless homeless kid who hung out with other penniless homeless kids, stupidly expensive sneakers that also let people track you in the dark had to be the dumbest choice possible. But it wasn’t about the usefulness in that case, it was about the mark of ownership. So before each meetup, Con would dutifully dig the shoes out from the bottom of his pack and strap them on, trying all the while to ignore how they were identical to the shoes the guy’s teenage son wore. Fucking creeper.
but this was by far the most thoughtful and practical post first-date/fuck gift he’d ever gotten. You could feel the weight of miniaturized electronics and entire reams of tech squished down into something you could loose in your spare change. It was heavy like only something made of tons of money could be.
“Not just overly aggressive bats either, Radd.” Boss had his helmet on - they were on the main floor, after all - but Con still saw the stern eye-to-eye I-am-serious expression in the tilt of his head and cadence of his modulated voice, “if you find yourself in any situation where you feel you’re in over your head, I want you mashing that thing.” The sentence ended on octave that suggested he’d planned to continue with a simile, but couldn’t think of any appropriate for mixed company. Probably something like ‘Mash that thing like I mashed your prostate.’ At least, that’s what Con would’ve gone with just to see how many of the people who were absolutely not listening in around them lost their shit.
It was ideas like that which were why Con wasn’t the Big Boss. No one would have a good time.
“You sure about this, Boss?” He asked instead. Conrad knew Hood was sure about it. It was rapidly becoming clear that Red Hood was sure about just about anything he took the time to actually express, but Con wasn’t. “You up for dealing with me calling in the cavalry every time I get jumped by a group of Gravediggers with one more shovel than I’m comfortable with?”
“Radd.” He remained continuously impressed with how the Boss could make the already flat affect of his robot voice sound even flatter, “I’m pretty certain that if you ever find yourself in a situation where you don’t like the odds, it’s going something where anyone else would’ve called in the cavalry long before.”
There was a muffled snortcough from the group hunched over building plans on the nearest edge of the Long Table. Con’s eyes flickered over for a fraction of a second, just long enough to catch Vines’ distinctive tattoos vibrating with the effort of biting back any further noise. Absolutely no one involved gave any indication they had noticed, but it was a good sign who’s side everyone would be on if he tried to push back any further.
“Sure thing, Boss.” he said as he slid it into one of his jacket’s inner pockets, “I’ll keep it on me.”
“And you’ll use it. If you ever think you need to, don’t second guess yourself, or argue with whatever voices in your head keep telling you shit’s not a big deal. I don’t care if you think I’d think it was an overreaction. Push it anyways.”
ooo00O00ooo
Those words echoed in Conrad’s memory as he watched pale sickly flames of green and orange trace race down the side of the half smashed-in car then spread across the dry concrete street beneath it like someone had built it all out of cardboard soaked in kerosene.
“Your degeneracy will be tolerated no longer!” The asshole in the green and orange bathrobe with the painted Halloween mask was posing like an idiot. The better to go with his idiotic costume and his idiotic attempt at a melodramatic voice. “We will burn your infection out of our city! Every last one of you will be purged until there is nothing left but clean sterile ASH!” Con would’ve laughed in his face if it wasn’t for… Well. That thing he was in the process of doing.
The figure’s hands once again burst into twisting green and orange flames that flowed more like oil underwater than fire as they twisted about each other. They grabbed a stray battered hubcap from the gutter, cackling with triumph as the whole thing exploded like tinder paper into flame. Their throwing arm was weak, but there was no strength or skill needed to lob the ball of fire across the street to splash against the side of the queer youth shelter. The impact smashed it into sparks of flaming shrapnel that set the cold stonework alight like so much dry wood wherever they landed.
Conrad shifted with a snarl, and the two dozen and counting gang members across the street shifted as well, guns all leveling to aim straight at him.
Yeah, alright. Fuck this night, then. Conrad gripped the hem of his jacket where he’d hidden the beacon and started slamming the emergency beacon as fast as his finger would move.
Honestly, this is what he got for daring to say that this was just going to be a quiet evening for once.
Notes:
Don't worry, Conrad. If things start exploding, I'm sure the Batman would show up. It's not like he's trapped inside in front of dozens of witnesses while he has a Miami Vice mustache glued to his face.
Coming up next: What the night should've been. Conrad wrangles his gremlins, torments his sister, and tries to encourage a potential supervillain to just take a nap.Content Warnings for:
*Con once again referencing his time as an teenage hustler
*Admission that two adult males got it on off-camera
*Arson with murderous intent
*Arson with murderously bigoted intent
Chapter 2: Conrad Sometimes Gets to be Domestic
Summary:
Here's how the night started. Featuring a younger sister's crush, adult conversations about the correct response to voyeuristic vigilantes, and the sorry state of certain pro-wrestling franchises. And a pile of gremlins.
Notes:
My drafts folder for this chapter is 45K+ words across 19 files. Christ.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
304
r/gadgets · Posted by u/original_stripe 8 hours ago.
Repost: What’s the Strongest CIVILIAN Laser POINTER You Can Buy In A Store?
Tech
Delivery companies don’t go out to my address so I have to do all shopping in person. Want a -strong- laser pointer. Not an actual laser. Not looking for space weapons and you Metropolis people are f'ing crazy I don’t even know what you think you're doing with those. You too Central.
Just want to know strongest best brand to look for in stores for science project please and thank you everyone
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u/technugear89 · 8 hours ago
Ziphon’s the best bet. They sell as .5W but go up to .8W and you can drop them off a building and still use them after. They eat up your batteries, but I just use rechargeables.
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u/plutosupremicy · 8 hours ago
Ziphon, sure, if you feel like funding Luthor’s next killbot maybe. Those things go crazy weird with power fluctuations too. There’s a reason you can sell them as .5W but still get .8W readings off them a few times per minute. AerodyneMax are my choice for best bet. Consistent .75W range if you flip it on high, its got an internal chargeable battery, and I’ve found them at gas stations before. Best out there.
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u/technugear89 · 8 hours ago
Okay, if you think KorbTech builds any fewer killbots than Luthor does, you’re getting all your news straight from the “Daily Panic” and need to stop listening to deadstream media. And I’d like to see where you’re getting that .75W figure from because the battery they include in the AerodyneMax 450-AA (which I must assume is the model you’re referring to) would only be capable of providing a charge at .6W at -most-.
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u/plutosupremicy · 7 hours ago
Well, since you think the Daily Planet’s some sort of crypto-alien-overlord propaganda joint, you probably don’t care about their tech review section which did a comparison of the top ten best selling laser pointers just a year ago here. And if you’re basing your judgement on the max strength of a pointer on the battery alone, you’re just revealing your laughable understanding of electrical engineering and I don’t think I need argue with you further on this.
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u/RaddicalCon · 5 hours ago
Bestest little bro of mine, I am here begging on my knees to please not try and blind our lord and savior and the one man standing between us and having Joker taking over every news channel for a ten hour monologe every night. I still have those lead-lined heat-blocking privacy curtains in the hall closet. I can set them up in the bedroom tonight if you want. But please don’t try and blind the Bat.
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u/original_stripe · 5 hours ago
No hes being a huge ass creeper and creeping around and its effed up weird and all the kids are afraid hes gonna unalive you or something! He needs to back the eff up or I will sear his bat-retinas with however many of these I can glue together!!
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u/RaddicalCon · 4 hours ago
Cousin, I am -loving- the energy you’re bringing to this, but again, I am begging you. No supervillainy until you’re 18.
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u/RaddicalCon · 4 hours ago
Blinding the Bat counts as supervilllany.
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oo00O00oo
This is how the night was supposed to go: Conrad gets up nice and early. Gets to spend time with his gremlins. Checks in on the ones that need some personal attention this evening; helps the twins with the homework they were having trouble with, go over appropriate use of laser pointers with Caleb, teases his little sister about her date night-
It’s not a date night, Connie! Just friends getting together to hang out!
A bunch of Robins getting together to hang out. Including the head of Riko’s flock who’s going to be in the neighborhood for whatever reason, yeah?
Oh my god, how do you even know these things?
Hey, you aren’t the only Robin Army vet I know! Besides, how could I not remember that one boy with the real nice forearms and the dreamy smile and insane asskicker vibe who’s only flaw was ‘being aggravatingly straight’ you always talked about?
You are going to fuck all the way off, Connie, or I swear to god I will find a way to summon a whole swarm of Bats on you!
Please don’t, I’m having enough trouble keeping Caleb from setting up firebombs on the surrounding rooftops as is. Besides, I’m just excited for you! This is the first time you’ve all gotten together since you’ve gotten out from our parents! They’ve never gotten to see the real you, before! He’s not gotten to see the real you, before!
Oooooooh no. No, no, no. It ’s not like that, I swear! I mean, I’m pretty sure he and Riko are a thing right now? And I’d never do that to her.
Well, if they aren't a thing, you should go for it. Then we both can be getting it on with our teenage Robin crushes.
I don ’t think it counts if I had a crush on a guy dressed as Robin when I was also dressed as Robin.
Doesn’t not not count, though.
-then finally head down to HQ where a stack of maps and reports and loose papers were waiting for him to sit down and read. Write-ups on every one of the dozen or so smaller gangs that existed around the borders of Red Hood’s territory, as well as every known instance from the past two months where they’d felt the need to tip their toe over the territory markers and perform a quick little dance in Crime Alley before fleeing back over the invisible lines that divided up the city in a hundred different criminal fiefdoms.
Because that spontaneous firefight between the Laughing Boys and the White Skullz that’d temporarily interrupted his night of revelations with the Boss? Not the first time that’d happened. And not the last time it’d happened in the two weeks since, either. Every time they managed to drag in someone from one of the gangs for questioning, the reasons they’d give for that night’s fuckery would be reasonable and logical (or at least something a small time gang with a dedication to a theme and access to too many drugs would consider reasonable and logical).
On their own, each incident was easily explainable and barely worth mentioning. What was raising alarm bells were the facts that there had just been so many incidents over the past few weeks, from all of the surrounding gangs, none of whom seemed to be coordinating with each other and were just as happy to open fire on each other as they always were, and that the only smaller gangs acting like this were the ones that shared a border with the Red Hood’s territory. The rest of Gotham may have been chaotic and in violent flux, but only in the sorts of ways it always was.
The Boss smelled shenanigans. Fuck, anyone paying attention could smell shenanigans. Someone was obviously running around like a meth’ed out five year old and whacking every hornets nest they could find; but who, or why, or even how were just big fat fucking question marks. Fucking aggravating shit.
So Hood wanted Conrad to come on in, read up, and “Get the lay of the land” when it came to all their neighbors, familiarizing himself with their recent behavior. “And keep that brain of yours churning. See if it picks up on anything the rest of us have missed.”
A month ago, Conrad would’ve snorted at that. The Big Boss and all six of the Underbosses had been poring over this information, not to mention anyone under Hound and Wolf and Slice with even half a brain, all trying to figure out just what the hell was going on and how much they needed to worry. What new insight could Con possibly bring to that?
“Well, Boss. After careful review of all the facts, I've determined that we’re just surrounded by a whole bunch of idiots with a death wish. My suggestion is to post up psychiatric help-line numbers along our borders and otherwise resign ourselves to being their chosen method of assisted suicide.”
But Hood had made his opinions on Con saying he was as dumb as any other high school drop-out clear. And Conrad had to admit, there’d been a few cases at the Big Table where everyone else had missed some obvious random fact or solution. Well, obvious to him, at least. Most of the time when he tried to point out one of those ‘But what about [something simple and straightforward]’ things, he’d get six pairs of eyes (and one helmet) staring at him blankly making him have to dig into his brain with both hands and figure out how to actually articulate the steps in the thought processes he usually just skimmed over.
Sometimes it was just everyone forgetting about a simple solution,-
Or maybe just what professional Henchfolk considered a simple solution. Apparently “They could’ve easily dosed the water-cooler at the gambling hall with a low-grade truth-serum and then asked the mob guys in charge of fixing the fights who they thought would win. Then they’d just bet on whoever the truth-serumed mob fixers ‘thought’ would win. Perfectly straight forward, no insertion of moles or listening devices or blackmailing required.” only counted as an obvious possibility to people who’d had their parents pull the same stunt to find out what their grades really were or who’d actually broken the cookie jar and left the cocaine that'd been hidden inside scattered all over the kitchen.
It was Aiden. It was almost always Aiden.
-other times it was everyone somehow having missed a piece of gossip that’d been making its way across Crime Alley-
“Mamma Millies” started selling home-made meth over a month ago. What else did you think those $50 orders of take away bread-sticks were about?
-or straight-up not knowing a piece of local trivia that Con thought would've been common knowledge.
Didn’t everyone know about the Prohibition Tunnels? There wasn't enough standing water in them to attract K.Crock, and they were generally too crapped for a mad-chemist out for revenge to bother setting up in. Easy emergency access to those ancient bolt corridors back and forth under the streets were the deciding factor in about half the locations he’d suggested for shelters in the past. They were handy for when you'd pissed off the powers that be of a certain block but you still wanted to make your way past it without risking a running gunfight. You could even just sleep in them if you didn’t mind probably dying of lung cancer at the age of 25 from breathing in whatever was down there.
Regardless, if the Red Hood wanted him to come in, lounge on the couch outside his office, and read through files and reports while the Boss sat next to him and called up names from his “Dealers Who’re Testing My Patience” list to casually threaten them with death and dismemberment, Conrad was all down. And after 3 AM, maybe he could snuggle in closer and let that deep rumble in the Boss’ chest vibrate against him soothingly as he laid out for someone exactly what would to happen to their eyes if they kept selling to kids.
They might even retire back to Red Hood’s office at the end of it all to freshen up the corrugated-metal shaped bruises across Con’s back that’d started to fade.
That was the plan, at least.
oo00O00oo
Here’s how shit actually went.
The sister teasing had gone just fine, he’d gotten the twins through the initial hump of their math homework-
Even if they were in full ‘creepy ghost twin girl’ mode today; holding hands and saying everything in monotoned unison. Their previous foster parents thought it was the creepiest shit ever. Con thought it was the best anti-harassment approach he’d ever seen. The last time someone had pulled up in a car to be a creeper, they’d both turned to him in the same motion and said in perfect harmony “Oh yes. Oh yes, let’s go and play together. Foreeever.” That asshole had pealed rubber away from the curb so fast Conrad barely had enough time for his standard ‘toss a rock in the air and hit it through the car’s back window to put a nice gash across the back of their head’ maneuver as the man tried to make his escape.
-but Caleb proved to be harder to convince than he’d expected.
It was the Bat’s fault.
Or at least, Conrad was pretty sure it was the Bat. Having a psychological breakdown and seeing half-glimpsed pointy-eared shadows from the corner of your eyes that weren’t actually there wasn’t uncommon in the circles he grew up in, but he was pretty sure these bat-shaped figures were real. They flickered at the periphery of his vision when he scanned rooftops or looked down dark alleys. There’d be bits of movement between gargoyles but when you looked directly up, nothing was there.
You couldn’t venture out at night in Gotham for long without experiencing something similar, though. But it was almost always just a single flitting motion, a shadow passing by once on its way to somewhere else. Maybe once a month, or a few times a year. Not this constant series of movements from the corner of the eye and shadows that shifted between one look and the next.
Or maybe it’d only been the Bat the first time, but now every other mask in the city was coming to check in on the street rat who dared to make time with an ex-Robin as well. He could swear he felt the sensation of dozens of glowing white eyes in black domino masks narrowing at him in unison some nights.
Or maybe he’d just cracked and was suffering Bat-Shadow-Itis a decade earlier than most mooks usually developed it.
Except the gremlins had been seeing it too, along the rooftops opposite their windows. Their apartment was down low, the opposite roof-line was up high, but you could still see the ridgements and gargoyles if you pressed up against the window and looked up. And the kids had been saying that for the last few weeks the gargoyles were sometimes looking back.
Which was why, when Conrad entered the Boys and Boys-Adjacent Ages 14+ bedroom, he found Caleb curled up against the window, clutching a bulky contraption of half a dozen laser pointers taped together with a system of hinged interconnected rods clutched in his fist. He watched the boy scowling up through the window, eyes darting across the early dusk shadows above, then firing half-a-dozen eye-searing beams into whatever clump of darkness had drawn his suspicion.
“Caleb…” The boy barely even flinched, just turned to glare at Con over his shoulder. “We’ve talked about this, my man.” His glare just deepened and, without looking, he depressed the tab that moved all the connected rods to push their connected buttons as one and shot another multi-beamed blast into the undersides of the rooftop gargoyles across the street.
Con had to bite his inner cheek to keep from smiling and ruining his “Serious Adult Conversation” mode. He had a favorite in the household, and even Elaina readily admitted it wasn’t her. The dyed-blond streak through the kid's hair had long since been grown out, and he willingly came out in sunlight these days, but there was a reason why the his online handle was always some version of “Stripe” and why Con's ever-growing collection of collected strays were called gremlins. Caleb had been the first, and unlike the others here was there to stay. No chance of him ever cycling out of Con's care for a proper long-term home.
He was also the reason all the gremlins called Con cousin. Caleb was still somehow unaware of it, but he and Conrad looked remarkably alike. They had the same tightly curled black hair that shone with a hint of red in the light. The had the same hazel eyes with the same strong brow. Their skins were both within a few shades of each other’s rich brown color. They both had the same freckles scattered across cheeks and nose, though Conrad’s were darker while Caleb’s were lighter but extended down across his shoulders. They even had the same rounded cheeks that ensured both would have the word “boyish” somewhere in their descriptions until they were well into their 40s.
There was a reason the group that’d snatched both of them decided to try and sell them as a pair of brothers.
They weren’t, Conrad was almost certain. His parents may have had a very open relationship (something cardboard thin walls and too many people made painfully obvious some nights), but his parents also kept a meticulously updated spreadsheet of every sexual encounter either had that could’ve possibly resulted in children, correlated against known children of the former partners along with any changes in spending habits and a whole bunch of other things Conrad wasn’t sure about because the second he realized what he was looking at he’d unplugged the whole computer and avoided it for weeks. There had been no space in those exacting dates for him to have a brother six years his junior, however.
His numerous uncles, on the other hand… Well, there was a reason he suggested “cousin” as an alternative the first time Caleb tried to call him Uncle Conrad. It seemed a much more likely relationship.
Conrad didn’t miss the burn-patterned scarring that had wrapped around his upper back for a few years, he was glad to have been done with the reminder of the day. He’d carried Caleb out of that underground hell pit with flames against his back and other people’s blood on his fists, then never put the boy down since. Only a week after the breakout, he’d put down first and last month’s deposit on his first permanent residence with a roof since he’d left home a half-decade before.
Con might’ve been fine sleeping on rooftops and storing his shit in hidden hollows you could only access by free-climbing up 20 feet of tenement siding, but he’d burn the world before he let his little gremlin suffer the same.
It was harder to get jumped in your sleep by half a dozen guys and dragged off to a van if you were in an apartment too, which was a bonus.
And Caleb was turning out fine, despite all the young trauama. Aggressive as hell, sure, but rarely physically. And sure, he possessed a tendency to treat all of life’s obstacles as so much china and himself a rampaging bull, but Conrad wasn’t hypocritical enough to be treating those as negatives. He was just happy his little cousin was usually solving his problems through concentrated sabotage, social manipulation, clever tinkering, and the occasional extended public call-out that laid out every single flaw and failing and dirty little secret of the target in front of everyone who’s opinion they cared about.
Much better than only using guns and fists and blunt-force weaponry like Conrad had been at his age. (It was this sort of improvement in his gremlins that was proof Con was being an excellent caregiver.) Still, much like his older cousin, sometimes Caleb’s response was entirely out of proportion.
Case in point: all of this. “Caleb. I am begging you. You cannot permanently blind a founding member of the Justice League at the age of 14. You will be branded as a super-villain for life, and we do not have a costume budget for that. Please stop.”
Caleb just scowled and returned to glaring out the window, “I’ll stop as soon as he stops being a fucking creeper and trying to look into little kids’ windows!” Another bunching of laser-pointer lights made a sudden surprise sweep along the gap between the building with all the gargoyles and the building with all the outcroppings that could be gargoyles but were too geometric and art-deco to really count. There was a yeowling and the shape of a cat racing, but no lurking vigilantes.
Con bit back a sigh and crouched down, resting on his heels out of arm’s reach. “Okay, and that’s totally valid. He’s totally being a fucking creeper.” He wished there was some way he could’ve left a message to the Bat of “I sleep in a converted walk-in closet and my bedroom has no windows; all you’re going to learn by all this spying is how many different varieties of Ninja Turtles bedspreads can exist in a single household.”
“But please consider,” He waited until Caleb gave him a single dubious side-glance. “Half the gremlins have slept on rooftops in the past. There’s no safer place to keep out of the way of adults. Your big sister and her friends use the rooftops to get around. The Red Hood uses the rooftops all the time. I use the-“
“Okay!! Okay! Fine! I’ll stop protecting us from a fucking masked creeper watching us in the middle of the night and stuff, Jeeeeeezus!” Caleb threw himself back from the window and into the pile of pillows and threadbare comforters he used instead of a bed. “Happy?” he sulked from somewhere under the gently collapsing bedding.
“Happier, yeah.” Con scooted himself over, hunted for the mop of black tight curls, hidden beneath a few blankets and secondhand teddy bears and gave it a firm scruffing. “I know this shit’s the fucking worse, and I’m sorry you guys have to deal with it.”
He hadn’t shared the Red Hood/Robin connection with anyone-
Except for Eliana, because it was either fessing up to the one person who knew him the best in the world or committing to an elaborate ever-expanding web of excuses and hastily added explanations that'd suffer an inevitable collapse and revelation of the secret anyway.
-but the tension between the Batman and the Red Hood was glaringly obvious to everyone in the Alley. So ‘I’m sort of maybe dating the Red Hood, so we’re probably going to get scoped out by the Bat for a bit, sorry about that, FYI, I promise the only person he might want to punch is me and not any of you.’ was perfectly understandable to the kids. None of them had expected to still be getting cowled shadows stalking around two weeks later, though.
Caleb grumbled and Con took the opportunity to gently grab the multi-laser pointer and pocket it away. “If you’re that worried about it, I’ve still got those blackout curtains I was talking about earlier. They got everything to block all that night tech goggle stuff. I could put those in your room before I head out if you want.”
Caleb just burrowed in deeper and insisted he didn’t want Con to do anything and privacy curtains were stupid and Batman was stupid and everything was stupid, so Conrad took the time needed to set up the privacy curtains and make sure there wasn’t any gaps for Bat-Tech Goggles to see through. Caleb didn’t say anything, but also didn’t try to squirm away from Con’s final head ruffle, which was a declaration of grateful love in 14 year old-ese as far as he was concerned.
All this meant, however, that Conrad wasn’t able to escape the apartment before the common room between the bedrooms and the exit got packed past capacity by gremlins and friends-of-gremlins, burying the couch under bodies, all clustering around the oversized flatscreen that had once graced the walls of a sports bar before it'd been 'liberated'.
Everyone who lived in the apartment aside from Con, Caleb (now crashed out under a dozen blankets), and Elaina (still deciding between green shirt with yellow jacket, or yellow shirt with red jacket for the Robin-meet) was crammed into the room, along with at least half a dozen friends and opportunists from the rest of the apartment complex added to the mix.
The chyron for Super Wrestling MegaStars(tm) was already emblazoned across the bottom of the screen and a semi-familiar slab of ham and muscle wearing a few scraps of shiny star-spangled spandex was yelling into a ringside reporter’s microphone.
“Oh hey! It’s Connie! Hey Cousin Connie!” chirped up from somewhere in the middle of the pile of bodies on the couch. Half a dozen voices echoed it with varying levels of excitement and attention.
“Hey Vick, hey everyone.” Conrad was a little distracted himself as he squeezed his way along the way towards the door, his attention on the screen as he tried to place what the Super Wrestling MegaStars(tm) Kayfabe insisted was a genuine meta pro wrestler and not just someone who’d skipped getting the foundation of his musculature into form before falling back on injections of whatever lab-cooked supplements were available this season. The sense of familiarity was digging at him until it suddenly clicked.
“Wait, is that the Americanator? I thought he’d retired back in the Luthor administration or something.”
“Oh yeah, nah,” Alvero chimed up from where he was sitting at the foot of the couch. Long unkempt blond hair hung over his face and formed the perfect privacy screen for him and his phone, but the lanky kid never had any trouble following the conversations around him, “he totally died in the Secret Calamity Wars back in ‘09, but then he and the rest of the Shock’n’Awe Krew got resurected during the Night of the Necronlight, so now he’s back to get the championship belt.”
“And vengeance!” added a quarter of the room as one.
“And also vengeance.” Alvero agreed. “He’s convinced that Solar Fist allowed the Shock’n’Awe Krew to get ambushed by Genocide during the SCW mega-showdown in order to win the belt for himself and now that it’s revealed that Solar Justice was actually Solar Fist under the mask the whole time-“
“It’s okay!” Con cut in the moment Alvero hesitated to take a breath in, “I appreciate the plot synopsis, but I was just curious what he was doing up there a decade after retiring because of a spinal injury.”
From the back of the couch, a boy he doesn't recognize with a deep brown face under rich black curls turns to glare at him in betrayal. “He didn’t hurt his back, he was dead. Because of the Calamity Wars!”
“Right.” Con agreed. “My mistake.”
He finally reached the door and took the opportunity to look around the room. He frowned slightly. “Alright, so I’m seeing a couple of unfamiliar faces here and I just want to make sure everyone knows the number one rule about watching wrestling at Casa de Conrad. You know what that is?”
“Don’t try and do any of the moves you see!” a dozen or so voices chanted back at him. It was easy to tell which outside friends weren’t frequent guests by the way they started at the sudden call and response.
“And why don’t you try any of their moves?”
“Because they’re idiot assholes who don’t know what they’re doing.” Came back in a slightly staggered cadence. Still good enough.
He felt his back pocket vibrate as someone tried calling his phone. He cursed and started reaching for it while finishing “So what do you do instead of trying out those moves and getting yourself killed?”
Con got his phone out and hit the talk button just in time for whoever was at the other end to receive the experience of a dozen teenagers shouting in unison, “Get Cousin Conrad to show us how toactually do them!”
He nodded in proud satisfaction. Meta Wrestling lived off their invisible wires and practical effects tricks and (grudgingly admitted) excellent acting chops from the fighters to sell that they were actually getting punched by someone who could throw a mac truck. Trying to repeat any of their special moves as shown was doomed to failure unless the kid had an unrealized ability to materialize jump wires, rigging, and a crew to work them out of thin air.
But they still wanted to do them, which is why any weekend after a new showdown, Conrad spent a few hours up on the rooftop showing the kids how best to duplicate each stunt without doing something that’d break their neck or at least an arm.
The worst thing that’d happened in the last three years was Vick cracking a rib while attempting a Solar Piledriver, so he was counting his approach as a win and evidence that the Foster Family verification people didn't know what they were talking about.
“One sec” he whispered into the phone as he grabbed his sling pack and threw it over his shoulder, then reached for his bat and strapped it into the customized holster he'd added a few years before.
Raising his voice, Con called out, “Alright, same rules as always, everyone: oldest person with a permanent bed here is in charge, our neighbors are lovely people and mostly work day shift so don’t fuck with them with the noise, and if you set something on fire for fuck’s sake have a unified cover story in place before I get home. The last attempt was just sad.”
He was already through the door by the time he was done, the last bit shouted from the hallway. The gremlins acknowledged the orders, but distractedly. Solar Fist had just shown up on screen to give his smack-talk counter-statement, which was much more important.
Conrad hip bumped the door closed behind him and finally brought his phone up to his ear. “Sorry about all that, you just caught me on the way out. Who’s calling and how much firepower do you need me to bring?”
oo00O00oo
The answers were “Angela” and “The fuck? None! Absolutely none! Did I even call the right number?” Angela was one of the newer workersat the Lucas Trent Center, AKA Shelter #21, AKA the one dedicated specifically to queer homeless youth. When she explained that she was the only official staff who’d shown up for night shift, her only backup were two volunteers, and she’d resorted to calling the number Jeremiah had left behind for staffing emergencies, Conrad immediately changed his heading and leapt for the nearest fire-escape to haul himself roofward so he could make his way over with all possible speed.
Always faster to figure out where best to leap between two buildings than to investigate and avoid every alleyway, dark corner, and possible bolt hole between you and your destination.
He knew he should’ve had someone in place to handle the staffing shit already, but he was having a fuck of a time finding good fits who hadn’t already been laid claim to by someone else. And while he now outranked most of the people in charge of individual gang members, Con wasn’t going to start throwing his weight around like that for something as simple as “I need a guy to make sure we don’t have three kids with no clue what they’re doing left managing 60 kids who’re homeless and pissed at the world.”
Getting them setup for the night and calling around for emergency fills should only taken an hour or two. Then he could head on over to Red Hood’s HQ for a solid night of research and ‘it doesn’t count as snuggling if the couch just isn’t big enough for you two at once".
That was the plan, at least.
He really needed to learn his lesson about making plans.
Notes:
As stated at the beginning, I had a hell of a time getting this chapter to come out without getting bogged down into too many side digressions about Conrad's daily life. Parts that didn't make it in include his first meeting with the rest of the Underbosses, the full extent of his new duties, Cinder's future projects which we know nothing about officer, why Hound's hackles are raised by the newest Underboss at the table, a full rundown of all six of the other Underbosses and what they're about, Tank's little brother using Conrad as a jungle-gym, Gotham television political ads, Conrad's heavily modified leather sling bag and just what all he carries in it, a detailed outline of Casa de Conrad's bedroom arrangements, and much more.
I'm sure most of it will work it's way back via future chapters' sidebars or a work of various bits and ends that didn't have a slot but make for good Lore(tm).
Speaking of, the thing that finally shook crap loose was going back to the series' roots and kicking off with a fresh Reddit post. I'd like feedback on how that works, because I'm debating whether that should become an ongoing thing and a way to tease information and plot developments that don't fit organically into Conrad's narrative flow. So if you have thoughts, especially negative/feedback sorts, please let me know.
Coming up next: Conrad deals with non-stop thrills as he straightens out staffing issues at a homeless shelter! He also meets a nice young man with a familiar last name, and the story's plot and the series' plot arc start rumbling in from the horizon.
Chapter Specific Content Warnings for
*Creepy adults peering into the bedroom of under-aged children for unknown purposes in the middle of the night
*Discussions of perminantly blinding someone with high powered laser pointers
*Past child abduction
*Past implied child sex trafficking
*Past off-screen violence and arson committed against child sex traffickers
*Mention of burn scars
*That thing where you call an emergency number your boss left behind and the other guy at the end asks how many guns he should be bringing.
*Conrad's filthy filthy language and slightly less filthy mind
Chapter 3: Conrad's Perfectly Normal Crosstown Commute
Summary:
No, I’m sorry, Nancy’s the overboss to the LTC. Mr. Cultleader is the overboss for THE ENTIRE PARK ROW SHELTER NETWORK!!!
How is this city even real.
Apparently I’ll know him when I see him because “He’s allergic to sleeves and will probably be showing off his Tactical Action Abs Tee Em (he literally said the letters t and m).It's not paranoia, it's being genre aware. The whole situation at the Center is hitting Conrad wrong, and those suspicions are only confirmed when the shooting starts outside.
Notes:
Everyone who said anything about the Reddit posts said they wanted more of them, so here we go.
Also, it's NaNoWriMo! This will apparently not change my output a whit.
Chapter specific CWs in the End Notes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
64
r/rant · Posted by u/unsuspectedbutterfly089 40 minutes ago.
No One Else Showed Up For Shift. I’ve Only Worked Here Two Weeks!!!
I’m doing this instead of hyperventalating as I pull myself together in the bathroom. I just need to shout this into the void.
So, I recently started working at this place, right? Good place, good people, doing good things. I’m just sort of shadowing the lady who does all the book keeping so I can take over some of her duties so she has time to sleep and all. I haven’t had any exposure to anything else that goes on around here, and there’s a lot of moving parts.
I’ve got Night Shift starting today for a week. Sort of a chance to do the paperwork thing on my own at a time where it wont be the end of the world if I mess something up and all.
So, I get in, 15 minutes late, and waiting for me is the head of the Swing Shift (more like Afternoon Shift here due to how timing works out, but anyways), who all but chucks the keys at me and going “You’re the first person to actually show up. Here’re the keys. Tell (Night Shift Boss) a very merry Fuck You for making me late to shit.”
That was a whole-ass hour ago.
I’m still the only person who’s shown up.
There is no one else.
There’s supposed to be -*eight*- people here!
Plus volunteers!
I’ve got two of those, but they’re mainly kitchen people and mostly do stock room runs and water boiling and soup serving and shit, not actually cooking.
And we got like 50 kids here, and we haven’t closed the doors for the night yet so there could be even more.
AND NO ONE IS PICKING UP THEIR GODDAMN PHONES
I’ve drafted some of the kids who’ve been here long-term who know how some of the stuff is done and am letting them sort of take care of things I have no idea about and crossing my fingers that they’re actually good kids and I haven’t given asshole delinquents access to petty cash or something.
I’m waiting for it to be 1:30 past shift start, then I’m breaking out the emergency contact list the boss keeps in his desk.
His locked desk.
Which you need to break open to get the list.
“So you’re sure to only be willing to go for it if it’s an actual emergency”, he says.
Okay. Not on the verge of a panic attack anymore. Going to go deal with shit and hope hope hope someone else comes in. Or PICKS UP THE FUCKING PHONE
UPDATE 9:25 - One of the volunteer kids had to break up a fist fight between two guys over who got a bed by the window. I’m breaking into the desk early.
UPDATE 9:30 - I have no idea who this number was supposed to call, but when it picked up, there was some sort of mass of kids chanting in the background about how wrestling sucks. Then someone talking about not setting shit on fire. Then he actually talks on the phone directly and the first thing he asks me is HOW MANY GUNS HE NEEDS TO BRING
Like. I know I’m working at a shelter in Park Row. I know shit gets hairy down here. But why the fuck is the emergency contact some sort of fucking cult leader gun runner?
Shit, he’s already on his way.
UPDATE 9:35 - He says he’s not going to bring any other guns and that he’s sorry about that, he thought I was someone else.
This does nothing for my peace of mind.
UPDATE 9:45 - I asked (Kid who’s helping at the front desk because he knows how you fill in the intake sheets) if he knew who this guy was, and apparently Mr. Anti-Wrestling Cult Leader Gun Runner is the OVERBOSS for this place??
No, I’m sorry, Nancy’s the overboss to the LTC. Mr. Cultleader is the overboss for THE ENTIRE PARK ROW SHELTER NETWORK!!!
How is this city even real.
Apparently I’ll know him when I see him because “He’s allergic to sleeves and will probably be showing off his Tactical Action Abs Tee Em (he literally said the letters t and m).
I need to help the two volunteers figure out how to feed everyone. I do not have time to process any of this.
Hey, if anyone out there reading this is able to get to Park Row and 67th… HELP
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oo00O00oo
If he took the streets, it would take Conrad about 35 minutes to make it to the Lucas Trent Center. Less if no one was lurking around alley way entrances looking for an opportunistic mugging victim and no fights had broken out on the street along the way. Longer if there was a drive-by attack, or a mass-brawl had spilled out onto the sidewalk, or he came across someone in severe need of a beat down, or someone had set a car on fire in the middle of the street, or anything else from Crime Alley’s extensive list of random encounters.
So he took to the rooftops instead. From up there, it was fourteen and a half minutes at full speed. That was for ideal conditions, however, when the sun was out, the surfaces were dry, and his pack was light and balanced. But currently it was night, the temperature had just moved past the point where the humid mugginess of the day started getting wrung out of the air as a constant sticky drizzle, and his pack was listing to one side with the stack of heavy bulky binders he was bringing back to HQ that night.
The final set of the stack of binders Cinder had dropped in his lap the day after his promotion. “Here you go, kid. It’s all your mess, now. ” The old man was fucking smiling when he said that. The man hadn’t smiled at his own daughter’s birth. But dumping off every single one of Red Hood’s community givebacks that involved a physical location? Shark’s had friendlier smiles, though not half as wide.
Surprisingly, it was less additional work than Conrad had expected. He’d been right that Cinder had already piled everything but the most overarching responsibilities of the Shelter Network on him. The only thing new was the 1/5/10 year plans and scouting locations for future sites. The Needle Exchange and Soup Kitchens were already running smoothly and unlike the unhoused shelters, the people in charge of them hadn't just got promoted upstairs.
The only new task that needed his active attention (and take-home reading) was the upcoming Community Assistance Center. Legal advice, help with finding jobs, help with finding housing, help with putting the screws to landlords who wouldn’t fix the heat… Out of everything suddenly on Conrad’s plate, finding people in Crime Alley with a law degree who weren’t already under lock and chain to the mob was going to be the hardest.
Cinder took Con’s glaring as victory and had been being unspeakably smug for the last two weeks. Well played, old man. You miserable fucker.
All that combined meant that Conrad would be taking the rout slowly and carefully. He’d long since learned his lesson about going full speed in the dark and the rain. He’d been 12, and delivering a heavy backpack to the far end of the Alley when his foot had slipped out from under him while eight stories up.
And he’d been fine! Mainly because of the pile of discarded packing material that someone had abandoned in an empty lot blocked from the streets by surrounding buildings, sure. And sure, he wound up spending about three hours just lying there waiting for his heart to stop trying to leap out of his chest and the pain and aches to fade down to just a few dozen specific locations instead of his whole body. And sure, it turned out the backpack had been full of bathtub moonshine, and the network of small fine scars the shards of glass had left on his back were still there, and sure, he’d gotten in a load of shit with the guys he was meant to deliver to, but he’d been fine.
But Conrad wasn’t an idiot, and was perfectly capable of recognizing he was only fine because of a number of lucky circumstances coming together to save him from his own stupidity and he really shouldn’t count on that happening more than the once. So these days, he took it slow on rainy nights.
He was a mature and responsible adult, after all.
The angled tiled roofs of the narrow apartments and lofts along the stretch between 70th and 71st he took crouched low, his fingers lightly skimming the drizzle-slick tiles to provide that bit of extra friction needed if his feet ever slid. When it was bright and dry, and coming over from Parkside were he’d get a good head of speed, he could take this stretch by leaping from roof-peak to roof-peak before coming to a rolling stop along the broad roof of Park Row’s longest running chop shop just before he’d loose too much momentum to continue.
He was conscientious of his body, what it was capable of and what his limits were.
This part was fun. A swooping (formerly) silver arch of bird-shaped stone and metal pointed out from this building’s ledge diagonally across the intersection below. Conrad (having made sure there’s no hidden detritus along the path), raced down the two-foot wide strip of stone and leapt off the art-deco gargoyle’s head.
He wasn’t taking unnecessary risks.
The neon lights of the building diagonally across the street had burnt out a little over a year ago and no longer light up the decorative platform that once served as the base for a fourth towering human-esc statue like the ones that stood at the building ’s other three corners. But Conrad had taken this leap often enough to know exactly where to aim himself, and he landed six stories below in a perfect tuck and roll that brought him up to a sharp but comfortable stop against the side of the building proper. The afternoon he’d spent sulking on the platform’s edge before looking up and realizing just how close the gargoyle reached had wound up cutting anywhere from 5 to 16 minutes off his travel times through this intersection depending on which directions he was coming from and going to.
He was prioritizing his own well-being over speed and sick stunts.
There was some stray gravel to brush off the fresh scrapes along his bare arms, the bulky pack had prevented him from performing the tuck and roll exactly right, but he’d expected that. A few scrapes never hurt anyone. Once done, it was just a matter of jogging down a ledge around the corner and using the uneaven brickwork to climb up seven stories to the building’s roof. From there, he could make it the rest of the way to the Center in a straight run with gaps of only a dozen feet at most between buildings for the rest of the way.
Every time Con tried to explain his free-running routs, people started giving him shit about having a death wish, but he really did put a lot of thought and care into finding routs that were perfectly safe. At least as safe as taking the streets. Safer, really. Far fewer stray bullets up this high, for one thing.
The Center was in the middle of a stretch of shorter buildings, all barely reaching six stories, so it was an easy matter to swing over the ledge of the building next door’s roof to land on the narrow ledge of stonework that wrapped around it at the third story. From there, it was just one more leap to catch the outstretched arm of the nearest streetlight, lazily swing around it one or two times to bleed off excess momentum, and then release as he started downwards and grab for the main pole and wind his way down to the street below.
Con took a moment to readjust his side-bag’s straps and give the surrounding streets a quick look over to make sure there hadn’t been any trouble waiting for him to land. Only a few pedestrians, none of whom were going to pay any attention to strange figures leaping down from rooftops because they weren’t idiots. Satisfied, he brushed the last of the roof gravel off his arms, and pushed his way into the Lucas Trent Center.
It wasn’t until he hit the slightly warmer air inside, and the wide-eyed gaping from the teenager manning the intake desk, that Con realized maybe he should’ve thrown a shirt on real quick first.
oo00O00oo
Conrad was aware he had a couple of character traits that combined sometimes to make it awkward to be around him. First, he was one of those (incredibly annoying, or so he kept getting told) people who didn’t really feel the cold like most people. It’d never factored into his life until he moved out of a cramped apartment, where he’d been surrounded by at least a dozen others’ body-heat all times of the year, and onto the streets, where it quickly became obvious he was having to bundle up far less than the other kids hunkered down in the alleys when the fall winds started to blow.
Second, Conrad really didn’t like sleeves. They pulled at his shoulders and arms when he tried to move them. They were constraining. They felt like they were binding his arms in loose ropes that currently allowed him movement but could be drawn tight at any moment. It set his skin crawling when he had to wear them.
It wasn’t like Con lacked self-awareness. He knew they hadn’t been an issue when he was younger. No, he knew exactly where it came from. Could even name you the exact date and time and sequence of events that'd brought it on. And that was fine! It was Gotham. Everyone in Gotham had at least one or two trauma-induced character quirks. It was part of the city’s charm.
It did mean that Conrad spent most of the year wearing open sleeveless tops, when he wasn’t going completely shirtless. His only accommodation for the current near-freezing lows had been switching to his sleeveless bomber jacket which had a nice furred in-lining that restored the little warmth the weather otherwise stole.
It wasn’t until full blown blizzards (or Victor ‘I sure love killing unsuspecting homeless just trying to sleep outside’ Freeze deciding it was time for a tantrum) that Con would finally break out the jackets that had sleeves and zipped up all the way. Still complained about having to wear them the entire time, even though he knew it was better than freezing.
Third, Conrad had spent his teenage years having to literally fuck to survive. Few legitimate businessmen in Gotham were willing to open themselves up to the mob blackmail potential of having under-aged staff, and Con was adamant about avoiding the kind of work that was readily available but all too likely to lead to Batman wanting to kick his ass.
As a result, his ability to feed himself, pay for occasional shelter, have clothes to wear, and afford the most basic of health care were all dependent on how much older men wanted to fuck him. From 13 to nearly 18, his chief survival skills had been centered around making himself look as good as possible and showing off the results as much as possible.
None of which he’d been particularly happy about.
It all had left Conrad with a relationship with his appearance and how others reacted to it that was complicated at best. A convoluted constantly shifting mess being a better way to put it. Tucker had once described the resulting phenomenon as “It’s like you’re out there living your life with the soundtrack of a docudrama or action movie playing in your head. But whenever you enter a room, everyone else’s mental soundtrack suddenly skips over to some sort of raunchy German thug-boys fucking thumping-porno soundtrack. It’s not your fault because you just look and move like that, and it’s not anyone else’s fault because you can’t control what life’s soundtrack does. But it can get weird, man.”
Con really wished he could’ve introduce Tucker to Red Hood/Robin. Between the two of them, they would’ve provided the perfect voice to his internal narration.
The week before, Conrad had gone around to check on Tucker (and a number of others). But despite the faint hope the Boss’ story had given him, everyone besides the former Robin were still solidly in the ground.
So when Conrad pushed open the doors to the Center and the scrawny black teen sitting at the intake desk looked up and had a sudden sharp intake of breath and a look of embarrassed horror filling their face, he could’ve smacked himself in the head.
He usually at least threw on a tank-top or zippered up his jacket before he showed up here. It’s the LTC, a place filled with hormone-addled teenagers with tangled sexualities they’re still trying to figure out and that many have culturally ingrained self-loathing over.
To have someone strut in wearing skintight jeans, with abs and biceps freshly pumped and shining with a sheen of sweat from climbing, leaping, and racing across the city, looking like something off a website that wants your credit-card number and $19.95/month was borderline cruel. Conrad was normally fine with exuding that sort of energy, smug about it even, but not somewhere like here. Not with kids like these.
Worse, he recognized the kid at the table. Zachery. Nice kid. Sixteen, black, lanky, probably did track or something before he got kicked out. Smart with a sharp mind. Big thick glasses of yellow plastic and a fade-cut that’d been just a few days old when he first showed up but had started to grow out since.
Way the kid told it, he wasn’t even sure he was some form of non-cishet. He’d just had some questions and was poking around online for answers. When his step(?)-dad found the search history, though… The rest of it was a story Con heard far too often. At least Zach had shown up without any signs of physical damage. Small blessings.
Con liked him. Could almost forgive him for being a Narrows boy instead of from the Alley, even. If the kid didn’t seem to have his shit together so well and wasn’t so convinced he had relatives who’d be by to pick him up any day now, he would’ve considered Zachery as prime gremlin recruitment bait.
As it was, the kid had spent his first two days at the Center vibrating from a lack of things to before badgering the day shift into letting him help out around the place. By now, he had probably spent some time assisting with every single one of the tasks needed to keep a refuge like this semi-habitable for the kids who needed it.
If those mysterious relatives ever did show up, Conrad had informed all the shift managers to make sure he was sent on his way with a copy of the information packet for how to become a volunteer. It didn’t surprise him in the slightest to see that Angela had recruited him to man the registration desk to get any late night stragglers properly signed in.
It also didn’t surprise Con in the slightest when Zack’s face went through several shifts in color and he couldn’t meet his eyes. Conrad zipped his jacket shut, making it look like just a casual response to coming in from outside, and Zack’s eyes finally dropped from Con’s stomach to his own lap as metaphorical steam came out his ears.
“Hey, Zachery.” Con said with an almost apologetic duck of his head.
“Hey, man.” Zach responded, staring at edge of the desk. Con could hear the tap-tapa-tap of rapid-fire texting coming from underneath. Hopefully the kid’s friends were equipped to handle whatever crisis of sexuality he’d just triggered. “Angela had just come to say she’d texted you barely five minutes ago. Wasn’t expecting you to get here till least ten.”
Conrad chuckled at that and shrugged, “Well, she wasn’t sounding like she was having the greatest time in the world when she called. Figured I should get myself here before she had a complete breakdown. Jeremiah would be pissed to loose his newest worker just two weeks in.”
Con had been heading for the reinforced doors that lead to the interior of the Center-
The entry room itself was little more than a nicely lit and decorated box furnished with one bullet proof desk (with an array of intercom and panic buttons) sitting between two sets of reinforced bullet proof doors. Cinder had given him a dubious scoff when Conrad originally proposed the layout. It took a few stories from his own experiences to convince the old man of their validity. For all the bright points of progressivism in Crime Alley (mostly clustered around Red Hood and his activities, honestly) the cultural trends of the 70s and 80s still ran deep and fag-bashing had never gone out of style. So many queers all wrapped up in such a nice little package was just too tempting a target for too many of humanity’s worse.
-when the thought of Jeremiah stopped him and he turned back to Zach. “Hey, speaking of.”
The kid jumped a little and shoved the beaten up cellphone he’d been given his first day at the Center back under the desk. Conrad pretended he hadn’t even noticed. Everyone deserved a little privacy in these circumstances “Uh, yeah, Conrad? Sir?”
“Angela skipped a lot of details in her panic and only said no one else was here. Do you know the details on that?”
Con could swear Zach would’ve been shadowing Melissa today, and since she handled staffing across the shifts for the Center, hopefully…
“Uh, some of it, but not all, Um…” Zach turned in his chair to fully face him, eyes scrunched closed and holding the hand with his phone against his forehead in thought, “Ah, the tall guy with the red hair. N-something? Nathanial? Had today off because of… Someone’s birthday. I want to say his mom.
“And Lucia wasn’t going to be back from their vacation for three more days. So that’s two of them. Um… Markus called in this morning with food poisoning, and Brent and Loraine called in sick in the afternoon, which makes five, but…”
Eyes still closed, Zachery counted off on his fingers before nodding, “Those are the ones we knew wouldn’t make it. But Jeremiah didn’t show, and neither did Cecil or Equinox, either. Angela’s tried calling them, I tried calling them. A few others too, but they haven’t picked up once. So all we’ve got are Angela and two of the kitchen volunteers. I, um.. I don’t know which ones.” Zack’s eyes opened and he gave an apologetic shrug at the last part.
“Well shit.” Con said, just letting all that slot into place. His brow furrowed. “Jeremiah, Cecil, and Equinox just went radio silent? No notice at all that they might not be in tonight?” Zach shrugged again and nodded.
Con’s frown deepened. It was Crime Alley; shit came up all the time. Hell, just look at Con’s plans for the evening. But there was something about those three names specifically that was sending uneasy twitches through the back of his mind.
There weren’t any chairs in the Center’s entrance, it wasn’t a place you were supposed to linger in if you could help it, so Con leaned himself on the table and pulled out his phone. He thumbed down the list of chats. He’d already let the Boss know about his delay. There was a little thumbs-up emoji from him in response and everything. This wasn’t the sort of thing Con needed to bring directly to him, though.
So he scrolled further down, passing “The Big eTable”. It wasn’t the most active chat. Most of what needed to be said between the Underbosses was hashed out at the physical Big Table, and whatever was bothering Con’s subconscious probably didn’t warrant a mass callout to the gang’s powers that be.
Decision made, Con scrolled down and opened up “The Sherwood Commons”. The chat was busy as ever. Requests for runners, for information, for a spare tool or if anyone who knew how to pick locks could get over to the Harrison store while the security cameras were out made the notifications scroll quickly. Notices about seeing outsiders sniffing around this street or the other, of power outages, checking to make sure the dealer at a corner was supposed to be there. The nightly chatter that Conrad tended to watch in his down time, just browsing for something that he might be able to help with that’d allow him to crack a few skulls.
It wasn’t often he posted himself, but this was a worrying situation. Con typed quickly.
Con>> ”Need a welfare check on three individuals. Outside Contractors. All three went radio silent w/o warning tonight. Timing is concerning. Moderate caution advised. Ping back at number with information.”
Then followed it up with the names and addresses. A mild doxing, perhaps, but the longer Con was thinking on it, the more uneasy the situation was making him feel. The last time he’d felt the back of his head crawling like this and ignored it, he’d gotten a new set of burn scars across his back for his trouble, along with a few new traumas and a whole baby cousin.
He really needed to get in and check on Angela, but… Conrad glanced up at the clock above the inside doors. 10:04 PM.
Alright, Conrad. Let’s hit the pause button, buddy. We’re about to start escalating and we need to think things through, first. Make sure we’re thinking straight. It’s the Lucas Trent Center, it’s your personal project, you got anywhere from 50-60 kids you feel fiercely protective over inside. You’re not going to be objective about any of this. Learn your lessons and let’s take the time to think this through proper.
There were nine people scheduled for tonight. Two were pre-scheduled to be off, no conspiracy around that. Three more called in sick. Strange, but if it was food poisoning it might’ve been something they all shared the night before, and if it’s a regular bug, coworkers are the ones you're most likely to infect. (Were any of the kids sick too? Check that next.) But three of the staff didn’t show up without calling in, and now none of those three are answering their phones. Three at once is too many to be sick, or lost, or forgetting to charge their phone, or any other nice comforting explanation. All of which had left only the newest most inexperienced staff member on site tonight. Someone who didn’t know how 90% of the Center operated. Someone who didn’t even have authorization to access the emergency clo-
“Oh. Oh fuck.”
oo00O00oo
Zack looked up from his phone - which had been chiming nearly nonstop since he’d gone back to texting - and gave him a worried look. “You, uh, you alright, man?”
Conrad turned to look at him, trying to keep his body moving naturally and his expression calm. From the increasingly worried look on Zachery’s face, he wasn’t pulling it off. “The people you can’t get in contact with. They’re Jeremiah, Cecil, and Equinox, right?”
“Uh, yeah. Those are the ones.”
The three members of the shift who were authorized to access the emergency lockers. The only ones who’d even know the codes to open them up. Who weren’t on vacation, weren’t even sick, were just… missing.
“Zach.” Con stopped trying to keep the cold tension out of his voice, and the boy put his phone down, sensing the shift in the air. “Is there anyone who’s staying long-term who hasn’t signed in for the night, yet?”
“Nah, no one. Evens showed up like half an hour ago, and they were the last.” He replied, not even looking at the sheet. “We got eight more beds and the smallest private room empty still, so we were gonna keep the doors open until-“
“Start shutting us up for the night,” Con interrupted, “And hit the red-light while you’re at it.”
“Uh…” Zach looked at him like he’d just chucked a ball between the kid’s eyes. Or had just taken his jacket off. “That’s actually a thing?”
It was. They were another thing Con had implemented during his slow accidental takeover of the network. The illuminated sign outside that read “Lucas Trent Center: Beds Open” had two standard modes. It’s current, where everything was back-lit with a bright white, standing out in the standard gloom of this stretch of Crime Alley streets. When the beds were filled, or they’d shut the doors for the night, everything went dark except for the white bars that outlined both the sign and the individual letters of Lucas Trent. There was a third mode, though, much the same, except the outlining bars blazed a deep vibrant red instead, almost as bright as the fully illuminated sign. A signal that could be seen from blocks away to warn anyone who might be headed there that they needed to turn away and find somewhere else to stay. That this location wasn’t safe.
Generally, this was activated when there was a danger of toxins or gas or poisons or crushing vines. Maybe an active Rogue battle, or Joker zombies, or whatever other bullshit Gotham saw fit to throw at its inhabitants. For places like the Center and a few others, though, it also got toggled when the place had to go into lockdown for… more mundane (though no less dangerous) reasons. Usually an asshole with a gun demanding to see a specific person. Sometimes something more.
Con knew hitting the red-light switch was an overreaction to what he had so far. It could all just be terrible luck and worse timing. There could’ve been a crashed chemical truck between the shelter and where the non-sick staff lived that was delaying them. And Firefly might’ve blown up a few cell-towers earlier in the day because the voices told him to. None of this actually meant that there was any actual dan-
And there was the gunfire.
Double fuck.
Random gunfire in the Alley was nothing special. Just some people expressing their disagreements. Maybe someone was working off some steam by destroying their apartment’s wall. Maybe someone thought they saw reptilian eyes watching them from a sewer grate and responded appropritely. That was all fine.
Multiple guns at once was something else. Especially in a neighborhood that’d been relatively quiet in the months since Red Hood had solidified his control over this stretch of streets.
To his credit, Zach had leapt over his desk and was halfway to the front entrance before Con could catch up with him and pull him back. The entire following argument played in fast forward in his mind-
“stay here” “but I want to help” “its safer here” “I can take care of myself” the same argument he’d been on both sides of too many times
-so he skipped straight to the end.
“I need someone here who can hit the emergency lock-down button on the desk and get through the interior doors before they seal shut. You’ve got the eye to recognize a threat coming through the door and the reaction-time to hit the button and get through before they can start shooting at you. Please.”
Zach spent critical seconds internally debating, eyes darting from the doors out to potential trouble to the doors in to 50 kids needing protection before finally folding, “Fuck, yeah. Okay. Goddamit.” Conrad gave the boy a grateful pat and squeeze of the shoulder and breathed out a strained ‘thank you’ as he raced out the doors.
oo00O00oo
Usually figuring out which direction gunfire was coming from was a tricky thing in Crime Alley. All the buildings were different heights, made of different materials, and spaced almost at random compared to each other. The streets were narrow, and the alleyways were twisting, all of which made determining direction more an art than a science, one that Conrad never quite mastered.
Fortunately, before he’d had time to even start cursing his lack of ability, the mystery of where the shooting was coming from was solved as a figure in a flapping trench coat turned the corner of 68th and pelted down the street towards the Center at a dead sprint. Some, but not enough, moments later, a half-dozen figures followed it. The occasional streetlight and still-illuminated window flashed across them just long enough to tell they were all dressed in black, with faces painted a stark white. It was too far away to see what pattern they were painted in, but Conrad would’ve bet Penguin’s annual bribe budget it was skulls.
He was racing towards the confrontation before he even consciously realized it. His bat was unhooked from its holster straps in easy well-practiced motions, the rest of his sidepack sliding from his shoulders and left on the ground behind him as he picked up speed. Anyone the White Skullz felt was worth chasing was someone who didn’t deserve it.
The fuck they thought they were doing so far into Red Hood’s turf hunting for a beat-down target was beyond him. Con had thought he’d put the fear of him into the fuckers hard enough they wouldn’t dare fuck around the Boss’ streets anymore. He’d need to fix that. And look, a perfect opportunity to do so.
The man they were chasing finally caught sight of him and gave a shout and frantic wave to the side to get out of his way or maybe just run. He’d breached the circle of fully functional street-lights Red Hood kept maintained around his chosen places, and Conrad finally got a proper look at him.
Fucking hell, he was a piece of work. The trench-coat he was wearing was a near-tan brown, billowing behind him like an ill-fitted cape. A bright Hawaiian shirt of palm-trees and parrots was half unbuttoned down his chest, and over it was jacket of some shade of pinkish purple Conrad didn’t know the name for. Pricey dress slacks that still looked freshly pressed despite the splashed up mud and what was probably at least a little blood by this point. Dress shoes that couldn’t be comfortable to run in, even though the guy was doing damned good at it. Large mirrored shades, thinning hair that had so much gel it was maintaining it’s careful comb-over even through all his exertion, and a bushy mustache with the kind of sharp lines you only got by touching it up daily all topped it off.
He reminded Conrad nothing so much as that private cop from that show his dad always made them watch with him.
“Alright, you see that there?” dad would say from his arm-chair as they’d all sit around him, “you see how they’re just staying in the same spot while shooting? They could’a split up to either side, kept the third guy shooting from the center, and flanked that poncy motherfucker. Guy’s got nothing shielding him from either side, it’d be a one and done shot. Fuckers deserve to get killed shooting like that.”
Or “Can any of you tell me why those chucklefucks’ plan aint gonna work?”
“Because they’re going against the good guy.”
There was a light slap across the back of a head, “Someone who aint a smart-ass like Aiden.”
“They’re kidnapping the wife to pressure the guy to make Magnum drop the case. That's just gonna make him chase after the kidnappers instead.”
“Aint Magnum in this one, but you’re right. What should they have done instead, Bianka?”
“Get blackmail on the wife. Threaten to kill the kid. Get her to convince her husband to give up on the case. No evidence of you doing anything when the husband goes back to whats-his-name, and he’s got no reason to keep on the case after except the plot says so.”
“Good thing real life don’t come with a script. Good think-through, but you don’t want to threaten a mom’s kid if you can help it. They get real unpredictable like. But yer the badguy here, so you own the mining town. Offer the wife a great paying job with medical to cover the kid’s asthma or whatever they gave him, but only if her husband chills the fuck out. If he still causes problems later on, you get arrange an accident once the PI’s no longer paying attention.”
And so forth. Real quality together time for the whole family.
…Conrad actually kind of misses it.
Oh right, Miami Vice! That was the show!
Mr. Vice from Miami was still gaining ground on the Skullz behind him (and Jesus, how the hell was he managing that in fancy dress shoes anyways) to the point they were no longer trying to shoot and were just focused on catching up. Wasn’t stopping them from shouting murderous threats, though, and fuck if it wasn’t a bunch of shit Conrad had heard from them too many times before.
Con stepped to the side and waved for the man to run on through. His motions were smooth and practiced as he pulled one of the half-dozen pieces of masonry he’d shoved into his pockets before dropping his bag-
He had? The back of Con’s mind double-checked. Oh huh, so he had. While unholstering the bat with the other hand. Shit, adrenaline was working overtime tonight, huh?
-and tossed the first one up in the air. He’d timed it just right for the brick to fall back into the strike zone just as Mr. Vice raced past him. Conrad’s bat slammed against it with a solid crack that echoed off the surrounding buildings like a particularly large wooden gun and it flew down the street.
Something in the pit of his gut bloomed hot and dark as he watched the lead Skullz in the pack pull up short as they suddenly realized who was standing before them. They were just close enough for him to make out their eyes widening right before the biggest one let out a dying-cat-like scream and fell backwards with his forehead split open. His head bounced off the pavement with a satisfying crack.
He’d already hit a second brick towards them before the guy had finished falling, but the Skullz had been learning and all he managed was winging the second target in the arm as he and the rest of the gang scattered for cover. It looked broken, or fractured at least.
Which was fine. Disappointing, but not unexpected. Conrad hadn’t even bothered setting up a third, figuring they’d be scattering the moment they processed what was happening. The moment his bat had hit the second brick, he’d turned on his heel and raced after the 80’s escapee, only glancing over his shoulder long enough to see if he’d managed to get two of the gangers out of the fight before it started.
It was surprisingly hard to catch up with Mr. Vice. He’d almost lost his footing grabbing for his fallen pack by the straps and swinging back over his shoulder without slowing down. After that, Con had to actually focus on his speed and could feel a burning in his lungs by the time he drew even.
By then, they were almost at the shelter. Conrad gestured with a wide sweep of the arm to the front door, and after a second of confusion, the guy nodded and changed course. When they reached the doors ten seconds later, Mr. Vice barely slowed down as he threw it open with enough force to rattle the bullet proof glass in its frame. Too hard, really, but it meant the door hadn’t had time to close before Con could make it through himself. The sound of it swinging shut behind him with a heavy solid clunk was a welcome relief.
Mr. 80s was bent over, hands on his knees, and panting heavily, and thank god for it. If Conrad had been outraced by some guy in his 40s (or 50s?) and the man didn’t even have the courtesy to be winded from it, he would’ve start developing a complex or something.
Now that they were close, there were several details about the man that were leaping up and down at him to pay attention, but he really needed to get his lungs back in order first. Just a few seconds.
Conrad got about three of them before he was jolted back up by a sudden joyful shout. Zachery had leapt over the desk in a single vault, feet never even touching it, and propelled himself into Mr. Vice’s arms.
“Uncle Matches! You made it!”
The old man wheezed at the force of 180 pounds of energetic teenager barreling into him, but recovered with a laugh, even swinging the kid around in a full circle just to rub it in. “Zacky, kiddo! Shitting hell, you’ve gotten tall! Look at you! Don’t tell me they had you working the front desk at this joint. Aren’t there labor laws about that sort of thing?”
Zachery was too busy laughing to answer properly so Conrad was about to chime in with an answer (to what was surely a rhetorical question anyways) when all the combined details he hadn’t processed managed to gang up as one and tackle his brain into paying attention.
Oh. Oh you had to be fucking kidding him.
“Kid, how the hell is your uncle Matches fucking Malone??”
Notes:
Conrad continues to be perfectly normal and average.
Zachery also continues to be perfectly normal and average.
Matches Malone continues to be a strangely charismatic underworld figure considering he seems stuck in the 80s and out of town more often than not.
The White Skullz continue to be the worse, but have a ways to go yet.Coming Up Next: A trap springs shut. Matches Malone wants to catch up with his old coworker's kid. Events continue to escalate, and Conrad displays a proper response to said escalation.
Chapter specific Content Warnings for:
*Fucking up your free-running and plummeting eight stories
*Getting a back full of glass shards because you landed on a backpack full of bathtub gin
*There are people out there who'd gladly beat you to death for being some form of non-cishet and we're going to be talking about them and preparations against them.
*Have we mentioned homelessness sucks? It still sucks. And we're at a shelter for the unhoused, so that's not stopping for awhile.
*Angry mobs chasing people, shooting guns, and generally being ill tempered
*Someone getting hit in the head with a brick at high velocity and probably cracking their skull open when they hit the pavement after
*Someone over the age of 18 accidentally/unknowingly maybe sexually flustering someone under the age of 18
*So much vulgarity
Chapter 4: Conrad's Got This
Summary:
Conrad just wants you to know that it's fine, everything's fine, he's got this, it'll be fine.
Notes:
First: check out this awesome fan art from Swamp Spirit of our favorite Not A Hench. Her rendition is frightfully close to my personal sketches.
https://www.tumblr.com/swamp-spirit/733020044755402752/more-fanfic-fanart-ive-been-reading-beachfoxs?source=shareSecond: The beginning chat transcripts cover the time period from the beginning of Chapter 3 to the end of Chapter 4. Just to prevent any confusion that might arise.
(And if it's not yet obvious that Zachery Soon-To-Be-Malone is actually Duke Thomas: Zachery Soon-To-Be-Malone is actually Duke Thomas. I've had him in the tags since Chapter 1, I promise.)Chapter specific Content Warnings in the End Notes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
BatCom Text Channel 4 :: 6/11/2X :: 21:46 – 22:23
::Automatic Speech-to-Text::OracleTranscribe v7.3b::
Sign – Shit.
Sign – Has B gone dark yet?
Sign – We’ve got a “development”
Orac – ::He went off-coms about fifteen minutes ago. What’s up?::
RedR - ::That’s a little late, isn’t it? I thought the plan was to have Matches rendezvous with Zachery by 8:30?::
Spoi – ::Yeah, well, B just had to do another swing by the HenchHouse first, just to make sure none of the kids were leaning out the windows waving to get adopted on the spot, and one of them hit him with some sort of multi-laser contraption from the bedroom window.::
Orac - ::He’s fine, by the way::
Orac - ::Robin::
Robi - ::(indecipherable sound)::
Orac - ::The new flare compensators in the cowl lenses were given a surprise field test and came through with flying colors::
Spoi – ::He just had to hide on a rooftop somewhere and wait a bit for the spots to go away.::
RedH - I love those kids so much.
Sign - Great
Sign – Wonderful
Sign - Hey speaking of, guess who’s gonna be here in ten more minutes?
RedH - I swear to god, you’d better not be where I think you are.
RedR – ::What’s the report, Signal?::
Sign - Lotta staff didn’t show up to work 2nite and head peep called the emergency help number.
Sign - Which connects straight to the Big C himself
Sign - He’s on his way to ‘help straighten this out’
RedH – Narrows, I know///
RedH - ::(Not typing this shit) Narrows, I know there’s a perfectly rational explanation for why the one cishet in this entire fucking family is in MY territory in the ONE specific shelter that ISN’T for him, and I’m going to wait to hear what it is before I proceed to loose every last once of my shit.::
Sign - ok 1st of all pretty sure im not
Sign - 2nd this was hes already here
RedR - ::Okay, Hood, this was already set up months before B even knew C existed.
RedH – WHAT was put in place
RedR – ::And even before we know where the Crime Alley Shelter Network was getting its funding from.::
RedR – ::I mean, we strongly suspected it was you, but that had nothing to do with it. This is totally unconnected to any cape business, I swear. Robin-Club Promise.::
Robi – ::The what?::
RedR - ::A rep for the CASN will be meeting with the Martha Wayne Foundation board in another week to discuss having the Network vetted for official MWF approval.::
RedR - ::Which means the CASN will be included in any MWF information and guides for the unhoused, they’d be receiving the full assortment of rebreathers, antivenoms, innoculations, antidotes, and vaccines along with whatever new ones come out. There’d be additional funding supplied, and the CASN can use their prevered vendor status with MWF suppliers-::
RedH – Yes, I have retained a base level of awareness about things that are very important to me that I scheduled personally.
RedH – So you’re pulling an undercover Malone operation to, what? Make sure the Red Hood isn’t selling homeless kids out the back? Cooking meth in the attic? Running some sort of Dickinsian pickpocketing academy?
RedR - ::That’s not really how I would’ve phrased it, I-::
Sign – ok so big c is not looking so great
Sign – ive only seen the guy in passing a few times while here though
Sign – does he normally look all nervous n freaked out?
RedH – What
Sign – he asked me bout who hadnt come in
Sign – went all jittery then started texting
Sign – he hasnt even entered the center yet
RedH – Are you at the fucking -intake desk-??
Sign – no one else here knows how its done
Sign – legit helping no ulterior motives
RedH – Jesus fucking christ, S
Sign – hey so he just told me to hit the red light for the sign outside
Sign – how bad is that
RedH – WHAT
RedH – CONTEXT NOW
Sign – he asked who the staff who hadnt shown up and we cant get on the phone were and then told me to shut the place down and hit the red light
RedH – Who can’t you get on the phone?
RedH – Who are these people?
RedH - **** you better answer now I swear to god
RedH – Shit, he sent out a request for welfare checks in general chat, one sec.
RedH – oh. Oh shit. Fuck, I think I see my man’s thought process here.
Sign – There’s shooting outside
Sign – C refused to let me go out
Sign – He has me standing by the emergency lockdown if anyone tries to get in
Orac - ::B’s tracker has him on his way. He’s moving rapidly southward and should be there within two minutes::
RedH – Just lock it down now, S
Sign – Can’t
Sign – C went outside to see what was happening
RedH – Of fucking course he did
RedH – Keep me updated.
RedH – Cancel that.
RedH – Lock it all down the moment he’s back
RedH – Do whatever he says to do. Listen to him.
RedH – I’m grabbing some guys and heading your way.
RedH – Lock down the -moment- he’s back
Orac - ::*****, what’s going on?::
RedH - ::(background shouting and sounds of activity)::Runners have reported back from checking in on two of the three MIA Center staff. The first guy said, and I fucking quote: “I’m no good at identifying burnt remains, man. Do you keep dental records or anything?”. The second guy says he can’t get in to do a welfare check because, again I fucking quote, their apartment building’s on fucking fire.::
Sign – b in. c in. they were getting chased n shot @
Sign – shut down hit moving inside
RedR - ::Should we head over and assist?::
Robi - ::We were to perform normal patrols. Unless we are told otherwise, I am not abandoning our orders.::
RedR - ::Wasn’t talking to you.::
RedR - ::O?::
Orac - ::Trying to see what’s happening. Not many cameras in the neighborhood. One sec.::
RedH - ::(Background sounds of gunfire)::Hey “Zach”, get my idiot to check his texts, we got shit going down out here::
RedH - ::(Continuing background sounds of gunfire)::Someone’s riled up the Gravediggers and we can’t get out until we’ve driven them off.::
RedH - ::(Three sharp gunshots from within feet of the mic)::Signal, will you please fucking respond::
=SERVER NOTICE=user_signal has been automatically logged out=signal lost=
RedH - ::What the hell was that?::
=SERVER NOTICE=user_batman has been automatically logged out=signal lost=
RedH - ::Why did no one tell me you could just -log out- from Big Bat Brother?::
Robi - ::Father?::
RedR - ::Oracle, did I hear that right?::
Orac - ::Yeah. Okay, we have a situation::
::Log Excerpt Ends::
Compared to the shocks Con had already ridden through over the last month, this one shouldn’t be especially noteworthy. He just had one of the biggest names in Gotham’s sprawling underworld standing in the entry room to where the most vulnerable kids in all of Crime Alley hunkered down for the night. He just had the only mob family head to have never been successfully nabbed by the Bat grabbing the nerdy overly helpful kid from the Narrows and spinning him around in a giant hug like it was a closing scene from one of those greeting cards channel movies. He just had the man who’d betrayed Two-Face, survived all the hits the mob boss had ordered in response, and had hammered out some sort of nonaggression treaty with the man not two years later just right fucking there not looking any different despite it being nearly ten years since Conrad had seen him last.
Fuck, Con was sure he recognized that specific shirt, even. The one his mom always thinned her lips at pointedly like she hadn’t just spent a week doing staffing and accounting work for someone who dressed like a 1930s white man’s conception of an Egyptian pharaoh.
“I didn’t ever tell you my uncle was Matches?” Zachery looked at him as Malone finished his spin and set the kid down, still grinning the ‘My relative actually came! I haven’t been forgotten!’ grin that normally made Con’s heart melt. Right now, it just made him even more suspicious.
“I think I would’ve remembered you mentioning that you were waiting for the head of one of Gotham’s three most powerful crime families.” Con blinked, processed, then narrowed his eyes even further, “Or that you were part of one of Gotham’s three most powerful crime families.”
Matches turned from smiling fondly at Zach to shoot a grin that was strangely charismatic for how oily it was at Conrad. “Well, tech’nick’ly speaking, he’s the step-son of my sister-in-law,” Matches broke off and turned to look straight at the younger kid, voice going deeper and flat, tapping Zach on the nose with a matchstick that’d somehow shown up between his fingers. “Who’s dead to me for what she did t’ you. You hear me? Her and yer dad. Dead. Both of them.” Something Malone did with his hand caused the match’s head to scrape against something Con couldn’t see and the thing flared alight at the perfect moment to emphasize the end of his sentence.
Matches paused, the flow of conversation broken as he just stared at the small flickering flame for a moment. Cautiously, Zachery leaned in a little and in a small voice asked, “Uncle M, you didn’t actually… You haven’t, though… Right, Uncle M?”
“Mrmm?” Matches blinked, eyes darting from the dying flame to Zach before he shook his head, “Oh! Oh no, no kid, of course not. I would never do something like that to you.” He looked over at Con, round mirrored shades unreadable, then leaned in to whisper into Zach’s ear just loud enough for Con to still be able to hear, “Unless you’re wanting me to?” Zach shook his head rapidly and Matches pulled away with a jovial noise and a firm clasp of the boy’s shoulder, “Then they’re perfectly fine and will get to stay that way so long as they never dare come near you again.”
“Not all problems need to get burnt to the ground.” Zachery said with a relieved grin, sounding like he was quoting something, and Matches laughed.
“Not all problems need to get burnt to the ground. Right you are, sonny.”
For the first time since he ’d heard it, Conrad’s mind flashed back to a ‘friend of a friend once told me they overheard that’ story someone had passed around when he was still fresh to the Boss’ gang about how Cinders and Matches had been partners way back in the day. Whether partners in the business of having unfortunate fires happen to the enemies of people who paid them or partners in the sexual sense or a mix of the two wasn’t clear.
The only time Con had seen someone brave enough to mention Malone to Cinder, the old man had just snarled a gruff “Never heard of the fucker.” and stormed off to yell at some kids who’re unloading a gun shipment wrong. Which just put more weight on the ex-lovers angle in Con’s view, but there was no way he was going to ask Matches Not-King-Of-The-Underworld-Cuz-He-Was-Out-Of-Town-That-One-Weekend-There-Was-A-Vote-On-It-I’m-Not-Kidding-There-Was-And-He-Would’ve-Won-Handily-And-Then-We-Wouldn’t’ve-Had-That-Gang-War Malone if he knew a potential ex-boyfriend.
Actually, come to think of it, even if Matches Malone did know Cinder, it wouldn’t have been under that name. And Con had never heard anyone mention what the man’s name was outside of gang hours.
Matches Malone turned back to Con, his (Somehow charming, flirtatious even) oily grin and ‘aww shucks, we’re all just friends here, aint we?’ voice snapping back into place like a light-switch. “So not the sort’ta relationship you consider countin’ as being part’a the Family family. Poor kid hasn’t even had the right name.” There another lightning fast switch of demeanor and voice as he glanced back to Zachery, “And we’re gonna be fixing that first thing, don’t you worry.” Before snapping his grin back to Con with a speed that left him a feeling little unbalanced. He’d always brushed it off when people said his own rapid-fire code-switching could be creepy, but he was starting to think maybe they had something.
“Mr. Malone,” Conrad broke in before the man could continue. “No disrespect, but we really need to get inside and get shit locked down before-“ He was interrupted by the sound of a body slamming against the reinforced doors from outside, followed by the kind of vigorous cursing you only got from someone who probably just dislocated a shoulder. “Before that. Fucking hell.”
Con grabbed Mr. Matches motherfucking Malone-
and we are going to end up down on Making An Example Of You Docks again, and the gun’s gonna be loaded with real bullets this time, aren’t we?
-and Zachery and physically shoved them towards the inner doors hard enough that the mob boss stumbled. Conrad leapt over the desk in a reverse of Zach’s earlier vault and slammed his fist down on the Lockdown button hard enough to chip the plastic. Fuckit, there was going to be a repair bill for this night already, he could just feel it.
The alarm sounded, a loud clanging ringing from repurposed shift-change signals that no one had uninstalled in the 50 years since the building was any sort of factory, and the front doors’ rattling came to a sudden stop as extra bracing mechanisms on the exterior slammed into place. Another loud yowl and furious cursing from outside let Con know someone very likely had gotten their hand broken as the external steel bars shot into place.
There was no time to enjoy it, though. Both of the Malones were already moving, but Con put a hand on each of their backs and pushed them faster through the doors. They made it through a whole five seconds before the doors latched shut with the heavy metallic chunking of pneumatically powered bolts shunking into place.
The actual entry room was much more welcoming. Interior design wasn’t Con’s purview – even when Cinder was the boss, he could’ve taken charge of it if he’d wanted to, but Con knew just enough about decorating spaces to know he didn’t understand it at all – but he assumed the place was done up well. Vivid colors, but not so bright they’d make Gotham kids uncomfortable (or suspicious). Large expansive cityscapes of Gotham decorated the walls, ranging from a view of the three bridges from the Clocktower’s peak at noon to a nighttime shot of Wayne Enterprises Tower illuminated with rainbow lights on Pride and a half-dozen others.
Con didn’t know who their photographer was, none of the pictures were signed or marked in any way, but they all had the same… feel? Style? The same style. Hell, the same style as the wall-art that decorated most of Red Hood’s civilian-facing locations. He’d gotten the impressionthe Boss knew the photographer personally and got them as part of some sort of mutual deal.
He wanted to meet them someday, if only to find out how they’d gotten to certain vantage points to take them. Like the top of the Clocktower. He’d tried to reach the peak himself after he saw that one picture, but barely made it a third of the way up before being unable to figure out a way to advance any further. Maybe if he’d managed to source a Bat-quality grappling gun or somehow got access to the interior, he could do it. But calling the first extremely unlikely was putting it lightly, and after getting a good look at the locks that’d been installed on the external windows, he’d given up on the second approach out as well.
Conrad legitimately enjoyed free running and climbing, but he’d never had the extra time (or available instruction) to develop his skills beyond the baseline of what he’d needed to be able to use the skylines of Crime Alley to avoid the myriad of dangers that awaited homeless youth on the street level. Even just half an hour of advice from someone who could make their way to the top of the Gotham Clocktower while carrying a full photography setup could help so much in developing some actual skill.
…And until this exact moment, Con had completely spaced on the fact he was dating/banging the guy dealt with the photographer and could just fucking ask for an introduction. He should remember to do that.
There were numerous couches and armchairs and other places to relax while waiting to see if the kid you’d abandoned even wanted to come out and speak to you, or just chill while you went over ground rules for new arrivals, or filled out paperwork, or just built up your nerve to enter the main common room. A nice calming relaxing place.
When the alarms weren’t blaring full force, that is.
The double doors to the large common room were already open, with curious residents watching them stumbling in from the entryway with the dubious calculating expression of Alley natives calculating whether the current chaos was something to ignore, flee, or use as a distraction to shiv someone in the gut or grab a few wallets. At least one or two pairs of eyes widened as they piled in, though Conrad couldn’t tell if it was because they recognized him, recognized Matches, or were just surprised by Zachery being part of the mess.
Both of the Malones were fine, no worse for getting manhandled to safety. Conrad quickly scanned the faces watching them through the door and didn’t see any that looked like they’d be an Angela. Giving Zachery a comforting (it was shaping up to be a fuck of an evening) slash congratulatory (Conrad had seen too many kids in Zach’s position slowly loose that hopeful eagerness over days and weeks and months as it slowly became apparent that no one was coming for them. The fact Zachery’s rescue had come, even in the form of one of Gotham’s few non-Rogue terrors, was like a ray of sunlight breaking through the daytime smog) pat on the back, he moved past the two and approached the growing bunch of onlookers.
Raising his voice to be heard over the ringing, Conrad half-shouted, “Does anyone know where the woman in charge is? We’re gonna need her keys to-“
“Why the -hell- are the alarms going off?” Ah, that was the voice he’d heard over the phone, more frantic and strained and nearing some sort of breaking point, but that wasn’t surprising. And there she was, pushing her way past the knot of kids who were keeping a safe distance from the doors by clustering around the haphazard collection of dinning tables. Five foot and a bit of change, artfully frizzled hair that’d been done up in what was undoubtably a very lovely complex braided bun a few hours ago but had come half undone. Plain sensible clothes that were nevertheless several levels more expensive than anything else anyone in a half-mile radius had ever worn.
Conrad didn’t judge her for that.
…Maybe just a little.
She came up short when Conrad stepped past the cluster of kids at the doorway and she caught sight of him. Her eyes widened, just slightly, and gave him a quick up and down. The series of expressions that flashed across her face would’ve been hilarious in any other circumstance, but it was the current circumstances and he really didn’t have time for whatever bundle of well-meaning microaggressions were about to head his way.
He reached out with his right hand and grabbed hers before she could flinch away, giving it a good solid shake the way his richer clients liked to do.
The same ‘I wonder if I ever got railed by their father? I wonder how they’d react if I had and they knew?’ thought that went through his head whenever he met someone from north of the Heights ran through his head and it was good to know that his brain remained trash even in times like this.
“Hey! Conrad. We talked on the phone earlier. Sorry about the short notice, but there’s been an incident with one of the guest’s guardian and I need the keys.”
“Oh! What? Sure? What? Keys?” That was a fair response; she had not been having a good night so far.
“The keys you were given at the start of shift. I need them to get into the office. So I can turn off the alarm and check the security cameras. Please.” The final please seemed to snap her out of her daze, and she quickly dug into purse, depositing the bundle of keys in his hand with a decisive jangle.
With a quick thanks, Con turned and hurried to the Center’s dark locked office door, sitting in the middle of the common room’s left wall, a light scone directly overhead and broad leafy potted plants on either side. ‘To create a warm welcoming appearance to encourage our guests to come to us if they have concerns.’, it’d been explained to him. Which, sure. Fine. Conrad would’ve set up a couch with a low side table in the common room to work from if he wanted to be open and available to a nervous kid, but it wasn’t like figuring that out was his problem.
Wait. Shit. Fuck, he was still getting used to this. Right, well, put that on the For Later list.
Angela followed after him, questions tripping over each other as they spilt out of her. How did the bedrooms need to get assigned, what did she do if people wanted to push their cots together, she wasn’t aware of an outside smoking balcony, was that really a thing or was someone trying to get one over on her, what were they going to do for food because no one was on staff who was cleared to cook, what about- Conrad did his best to try and remember them all so he could give answers once he’d taken care of the immediate concerns. Later. After.
Office door: Unlocked. Open.
Office: Looking just fine when the lights turned on. Generic and beige and filled with too many long leafy things in pots. He didn’t have to work in it, didn’t matter what he thought of it. He hardly ever had to let himself in at any of the shelters, so he had to hunt through the keys to find the one that let him into the back rooms where all the shit you didn’t want to leave open to any random Crime Alley kid who came wandering through was kept.
Motion sensors triggered the lights as he entered. The monitors looked like they were still on, which was good, no need to wait for anything to warm up. He grabbed a rolling chair as he passed, kicked himself forward, swung into the seat, and let the momentum carry him up to the security console with only a mildly rough stop at the end.
Big button on the left killed the alarms, and- Big breath out. Okay. He hadn’t realized how close he had been getting to having to throw something if that noise hadn’t stopped.
He briefly flashed through ways to make it easier to get that turned off, or at least be a less aggravating noise, before remembering that 99% of the time, there would’ve been someone already in the office to hit the button as soon as everyone was through the doors.
Conrad turned his attention to the security cameras. His breath hissed out between his teeth as he took in what they were showing him. There were seven young men in full black outfits and white-skull-painted faces trying to crowbar open the protective bars across the entrance door. The one currently straining with all his might looked like he might juice with something Venom derived from the sheer bulk of muscles he possessed and the way his veins popped as he pulled against the crowbar hard enough to make it bend slightly-
Conrad bit his lower lip and leaned forward. Oh please oh please oh please
-until the metal fatigue became too much and it sheered in half, sending the over-muscled Skullz back on his ass with a long gash across his arms from his crowbar half’s sheered metal edge.
God, he hoped the cameras were recording properly. That needed to be shown at the next movie night.
And if those seven (well, maybe six, now. That looked like a fair amount of bleeding on those arms. Big popped veins had more pressure behind him, Con guessed. Made them gush more or something.) were all that was outside, it’d be the start of a pretty fun night of playing with his food as he made them regret ever setting foot in the Boss’ territory again.
But they weren’t the only ones the cameras were picking up. Across the street, under the awnings and standing on the sidewalk were maybe up to two dozen shadowy figures with white painted faces, just.. Standing there. None of the usual White Skullz posturing or waving of weapons or any of the rowdy chanting he was used to seeing out of them. No, they were just standing there. Not at attention, but attentively on notice nonetheless. They looked… Regimented. That was new.
He only flinched slightly when there was suddenly a presence at his shoulder, and Match’s heavy ‘every port of the Eastern Seaboard’ accent drawled “Shit, kiddo. Just who are these little fucks, anyways?”
Con looked over his shoulder, and there was Matches hovering over his shoulder. Zachery was right behind him, standing up on tiptoes to do the same, while Angela stood by the back room’s door, wringing her hands and looking like she was wondering if she should try to throw someone out for trespassing, or if she actually had survival instincts.
His attention returned to Matches, and he opened his mouth to reply as his eyes caught on- “Fuck! Is that blood?”
Matches’ over-sized mirrored aviators turned to him, then turned to look at his own shoulder where a dark patch was slowly bleeding through his off-tan trench-coat. “Awwww, hell. That stain aint ever coming out.”
Zach’s eyes went wide as he saw where they were looking, and he groaned. “Oh common, B-eeeeeloney.” And yup, that was the sort of nickname you gave your uncle at age six and would never stop using until one of you was in their grave. “You promised to stop doing this.”
“Aww, Zecky, don’t be like that. It’s fine, they just skimmed me a little in a few spots, it’s not anything to-“
“A few spots?” Zachery’s rescued puppy eyes were gone, replaced with exasperated but steeled determination. “Alright. Main table. On it. Now.”
Matches began arguing that his actively bleeding wounds didn’t need any attention, and he’d know best, Conrad figured, but Zachery began shoving him over to where the office staff had three tables placed end to end in the middle of the room, and… Well, if his own step-nephew-in-law could shove him around probably meant that the odds Conrad was going to get Made An Example Of for his earlier manhandling had just dropped significantly. His eyes returned to the security monitors and he chewed on his lower lip. There were.. A lot of Skullz out there.
They couldn’t get in, the building was bullet-proof, and fire-proof, and as explosion-proof it could be made without rebuilding it from the foundations up. And for all the death and brutality they were responsible for, the Skulls had only really been affective against single kids cornered on their own who didn’t know how to fight back. Faced with someone who could actually throw a solid punch, they would be scrambling to escape the moment they realized what was happening.
There was at least 20 of them, not counting the seven at the door, and the cameras were picking up movement from further down the street in both directions like more people were approaching. They were acting disciplined. They were armed. They were calm. They were… waiting. And he couldn’t forget about how the only three people who would’ve been able to open the weapons locker had mysteriously gone radio silent right before this sudden display.
And Boss… And Robin had asked him. And there were sixty or so kids and assorted others bunkered down here with him who he was responsible for because Red Hood was responsible for them. And Red Hood had made a pledge that they would be safe.
Conrad reached into his bomber jacket’s pocket, and felt the hard circular edge of the emergency bacon he’d sewn into the hemline when he’d switched over to it the week before. Robin had told him he could call in as many false alarms as he wanted, he’d still always come running. He needed to throw the Boss a text, but events were escalating. The White Skullz had changed their entire MO over night, and now one of Gotham’s underworld luminaries was bleeding out on the office table of one of Red Hood’s establishments.
Having Matches Malone die under the care of one of Red Hood’s Underbosses in one of Red Hood’s properties was the sort of thing that could kick off a gang war to rival No Man’s Land. And it wasn’t like Boss was glued to his phone at all hours of the night.
Taking a deep breath, Conrad gripped the hidden beacon and clicked it three times in rapid sequence, waited a few seconds, then clicked it three times again. And one more time, just in case.
There were at least thirty figures standing across the street, now. Conrad turned away from the screens and went to grab the nearest first aid kit.
oo00O00oo
Angela had been sent out to the common room to make announcements to all the kids and let them know that they were locked down and why. Conrad had taken pity on her and jotted down a few late dinner suggestions that shouldn’t require firing up the stove but would be possible with the current contents of the kitchen’s larder. Assuming they hadn’t gone through supplies faster than usual, but this location was good about not doing that sort of shit.
Zachery had helped him pull off Match’s trench-coat, then undoing his palm-tree and parrot button up, which bore a jagged tear along his right shoulder that the trench coat had been covering up which made Conrad deeply suspicious about exactly when Malone had actually put the trenchcoat on and how long he’d known he’d been shot for. It was only when they were getting his legs up on the table that they both noticed the blood seeping down the left leg of his dress slacks and…
Alright, Conrad could understand Zach’s worry-fueled berating of his uncle on that one. Dress shoes off, dress slacks off, and he put Zachery to work getting everything but the trench-coat down to the Center’s industrial washers with clear instructions on how to set them to quick-wash mode. It meant the kid wouldn’t getting even further stress and worry from having to see his uncle/potential parental replacement figure bleeding across a table and getting stitched up, but it also left Conrad in the position of being alone with an incredibly muscular mob boss covered with interesting scars who was shooting him that grin that should be oily and fake but somehow managed to be confidently flirtatious instead.
And god fucking dammit, but Conrad had a type. Fucking sue him. Between this and his pre-revelation lusting for Red Hood, maybe he just had a danger-fucker thing going on. Whatever it was, it was going to get him killed someday, he just knew it.
“Gotta hand it to you, kid, real smooth how you managed to get everyone else cleared out without any of them noticing what you were doing.” It was hard to tell behind the face-covering shades, but from the way Mr. Malone’s cheeks worked, Con was sure he’d gotten winked at.
Not for the first time, he was glad his darker skin color meant not every passing trace of a blush showed up on his face clear as day. It’d made Tucker incredibly easy to read no matter how stoney his poker face, and Conrad just didn’t need that vulnerability when dealing with the bullshit life kept throwing at him. Like cleaning blood off an absolutely massive tree trunk of a thigh, whose muscles were corded and distinct enough he could label everything with bits of tape and use it as an anatomical reference. And the grin the fucker flashed at him was getting uncomfortably close to Boss’ Robin Grin.
“Unfortunately for whatever sort of highly specific fantasy scenario we’d be about to fulfill,” his brow tightened as he looked over the long tear across the older man’s leg. This was deeper than he thought. It needed stitches. The first aid kit didn’t have the material for that. “I’m currently in a closed relationship. You’re a few weeks too late on that front, Mr. Malone. Besides,” his nose wrinkled this time for a very different reason, “not sure I’m up for making time with anyone my dad used to bring home for dinner.”
It was amazing. Con could actually feel a part of his hindbrain face-palm right as his teeth snapped shut. Keeping everything off his face, he instead focused on swinging his pack off, opening it up, and pulling out the stacks of binders to access his own emergency medical kit. Conrad felt Malone’s eyes narrowing at the back of his head as he sorted through the medical-grade medical supplies he’d collected over the years, pulling out disinfectants, stitching, needle, sterile gauze, wrapping, and lining them up along the edge of the table.
“Ooooh. Aw hell, that’s what it is.” Con’s eyes flicked up to where Matches was up on his elbows, looking at him with surprised realization, “Yer one of Lupu’s kids, aren’t ya?”
Conrad winced and looked away. That... hurt… far more than he had expected it would. He suddenly realized that this was the first time he’d spoken to someone who’d known him from before aside from his little sister in nearly five years. “That’s- That’s not- Not according to him, I’m not, no.” He cleaned off the edges of the man’s leg wound with harsher movements of the disinfectant cloth than warranted. If it caused any extra pain, Malone made no sign of it. “I haven’t been for… Fuck,” Con sighed out heavily, “six, seven years, now?”
He didn’t look up to see whatever expression he was being given. He couldn’t imagine one he would be in the mood to receive. Malone was silent except for a faint hiss when Con injected the localized anesthetic before finally giving a deep sigh of his own. “I’m sorry about that, kid. It never seemed like…It wasn’t something happening in the time when I was over, was it?”
Surprised, Conrad glanced up, to find a face filled not with pity or faux sorrow, but furrowed in concern. He shook his head sharply, returning his focus to getting the stitching needle threaded up and mopping up the fresh flow of blood, “No. It… It was actually a lot like Zach’s situation.” Thread in, small clamps pulled the wound together and pinched it in place as he tested the skin and pushed in the needle, “Only instead of an internet search history, it was my boyfriend’s older brother catching us together. Everything went from perfectly fine to out on the streets in about thirty minutes. Most of that was spent barricading the bedroom door and packing everything up before ducking out the fire escape before they could get in.”
Matches made a small noise in the back of his throat. Conrad didn’t look up to see if it was in response to the stitches or the story. “Haven’t had much contact with anyone since. Ran into my dad at a bar a couple of years back and he tried to put a few bullets in me, but other than that...” That noise had been in response to the story, and it’s color was more dark and angry than ‘oh such a poor sad child in the rain’. Con’s lip twitched in a partial smile, just for a moment.
He was almost done, but he didn’t do this sort of thing every day, and could only split his attention so much. Judging from the thinness and precision of the scars across the man’s mostly naked (and we are not thinking about that) body, he was used to a much higher quality of medical care than what Conrad was going to be able to provide. But if he was going to be leaving a permanent mark on the man’s body, however small, he wanted it display at lease base level competence in his work.
It didn’t take long to finish, Malone’s gash was fortunately not terribly long, or he probably wouldn’t have been able to race down multiple city blocks while being chased by his shooters. Bandaging it up was quick and easy and took only a minute more, at which point Con slid a hand under Matches Malone’s-
broad, professional bodybuilder level of muscled
-back,-
Fingertips brushing over long thing lines, little puckered dips where some sort of venom would’ve been injected, rough burn scar patch, maybe acid, all over powerful flexing muscle while
-pushing the man up into a sitting position.
Look, thirty extra years, 80s styling, bad hair, and oily smiles aside, infamous Gotham City mob boss Matches Malone hit a lot of Conrad’s boxes and he couldn’t help how his lizard brain reacted to getting to run his hands all over that. He could control how much of that actually filtered out into the actual physical world, however, and as far as he could tell, that amount was absolute nil, thank you. Not the time. Not the place. Besides, Matches was neither Robin or His Boss. He just couldn’t compare.
“There wasn’t anything you missed. They’re just all assholes. You might’ve wised up and ditched Two-Face, but Mykola never did. I may’ve been officially disowned, but the feeling was very fucking mutual. Only people I’ve had any contact with since I was 14 have been others who’ve also needed to escape before shit got too ugly for them.”
Conrad finished binding the man’s shoulder wound and tied off the wrap and folded it over so it was a smooth surface the whole circumstance around with no parts of the knot sticking out for clothes to catch on and pull. Looking up, he flinched just the slightest bit as he found himself staring into Match motherfucking Malone’s unshielded brown eyes. Far darker than his own, he found himself thinking. And deeper wrinkles around his eyes than Con remembered him having. There were extra creases in the brows than the man his dad would drag home after a particular good run with the boss to celebrate he remembered.
One large hand rested on Con’s bare shoulder and gave a surprisingly comforting squeeze. “Kid, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to catch on when they kicked out a perfectly good kid. And I’m so sorry ‘bout everything you’ve had t’ live through since. But it does my heart so good t’ know ya made it out and that you’ve been strong enough t’ break with them entirely. And I’m so proud t’ve found ya here, protecting all these kids like my nephew from people like yer dad ‘n his. You’ve done good, kid.”
“O-oh.” Con had no idea how to respond to that. Con had no idea how to even begin processing that. The questions of ‘How would it’ve been your responsibility to be there for me in the first place?’ or ‘There were like ten of us, are you even sure you’re remembering the right kid here?’ floated through his mind, but dissolved before he could put them to words. Hot pinpricks danced along the corners of his eyes and he had to blink away a sudden moisture. “That, I. Thank you. I mean- Yeah. Okay. Thank you.”
Matches gave him a tight smile. It looked awkward, but it also looked genuine. The smile of someone so used to faking them that he’d almost forgotten how to do it for real. Con returned it as best he was able. And with that, whatever moment that’d just happened was over. The aviators were snapped open and put back on, and Conrad was left looking at twin reflections of his own slightly confused face.
“So, not that I don’t appreciate ya wanting to get the blood off my clothes, but you have anything else around here in my size? Don’t look forward to dealing with whatever,” a wave at the monitors and the silent standing figures, “all that is in my boxers. It aint college any more.”
“Oh shit, right, I meant to have Zach pick something up from-“ and speak of the devil. The back office’s door pushed open and Zach stumbled in looking flushed and out of breath. He barreled over the rest of of Con’s sentence in a single rush.
“Hey, sorry, but do either of you have cell signal? All my shit suddenly cut out on my way down to laundry and I’m not getting anything.”
Con blinked and shot a glance to the security screens, a tightness beginning to grow in his chest. He grabbed his phone from his pack and quickly popped open The Boss’ chat and fired off a quick “ETA?”
Not a second later, his phone chirped and ‘Message delivery failed. Servers Cannot Be Contacted.’ Popped up on the screen. Instead of service bars, there was just a little x over the upper corner icon. His lips pressed together and he pushed himself up. He started to the door out to the commons and the computers they had set up out there only to run into Angela rushing in to meet him, “Conrad! Sir! Um, I was trying to email my parents to let them know what was going on, and the internet just went down? And one of the kids says the land-line phone is out too? Is this part of the lockdown?”
Con cursed, but before he could answer, he was distracted by a low growl from behind him. Matches Malone was sitting up, legs over the edge of the table, and pushing a piece of metal and plastic that’d flipped out from the side of his glasses against his ear. “Security, respond. O…-liver, respond. Are you there?” He squeezed the two edges of the thin wedge and repeated, “Liam, if you can hear this, report in. Liam, can you hear me?” Another squeeze, “Draper? Draper, are you receiving this line?”
Huh. Alvin Draper not only existed, but he also worked for Malone. If Duncan was still speaking to him, he’d owe the guy fifty bucks. Not the time.
Zachery met his eyes, the cold steel in them mixed with open worry. Matches cursed and threw the half-used package of gauze across the room, knocking a cheap flower vase filled with pens off a desk at the far end of the room. Angela jumped with a squeak when it smashed against the floor.
Matches looked up and between the three of them, and for the first time Conrad truly saw the dark roiling fire in the man that’d gotten him within a hair’s breadth of taking over the entirety of the Gotham underworld almost single-handedly. In a voice with a much sharper edge and lower timber than his earlier glad-handing, he growled, “Full spectrum communication lockout.” those eyes turned to him, and even after everything that’d just happened between them, it took effort for Conrad not to take an instinctive step back in the face of that glare. “That’s not easy shit to pull off. Kid, I think it’s time you explained exactly who these fuckers are and why exactly they thought it’d be a good idea to fuck with Matches motherfucking Malone.”
Notes:
Future Conrad is pointing at this chapter and shouting "See? I totally tried to use it before shit went down! I can't be held responsible this time!"
Coming up next: Plan A (get everyone inside, head back out and hit bigots with a bat until they stop moving) is a wash. Plans B-D aren't looking much better. Conrad officially stops trying to constrain the crazy. A bad guy with an actual name appears, Matches Malone is there and it's now everyone's problem, and Zachery is doing his best.
Content Warnings for:
*Bullet wounds
*Performing light surgery on an office table
*A silently gathering mob of the sorts of people who probably want to kill you
*Off-screen gun battles between rival gangs
*The dawning realization that you have horribly miscalculated the threat level of your current personal nemesis organization and 60 kids are caught in the crossfire
*Just general creeping dread in general
Chapter 5: Conrad's Still Pretty Sure He’s Got This
Summary:
Matches stopped being carved out of stone and reached forward to pick up the finished gun Con had just placed down. “Killing isn’t going to solve this, you have to know that. You’re a good kid, Conrad; you’re better than this.”
Con’s hands stilled and he looked up slowly. He didn’t know what expression was on his face, but whatever it was, it was enough for Matches to make the slightest minute shift in his posture.********
Only now is Conrad realizing just how intricate the sprung trap truly is. Options are dwindling and time is running short. Is this really the time to get moralized at by a crime boss of all people? Apparently so.
Notes:
Originally, I was going to have an AskReddit thread going into the publicly known details of the Malone Crime Family of Gotham. But this chapter's already clocking in at 12K words and begins with a few thousand words of world-building flashback already. Sorry to those of you who were looking forward to details on this continuity's version of the Malones.
Two main notes: First, this chapter goes into more detail about the White Skullz being murderously bigoted assholes, and there will be discussion of past deaths and beatings and violence that've taken place. There's also going to be drug use by a main character. Details on specifics and the rest of the chapter specific CWs are in the end notes a always.
Secondly, the Underboss meeting this chapter opens with a flashback to is the same meeting Conrad talked about in Chapter 9 of "Reddit Posts of a Crime Alley Kid", just to help keep everyone's timelines straight.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
A LITTLE OVER THREE WEEKS AGO
“Alright.” The Red Hood turned to face the six people sitting around the Big Table with what was probably a stern expression behind his helmet. A gloved hand slapped the pinboard covered in pictures, maps, and string that’d been placed at the table’s head and pointed at the piece of paper reading “White Skullz” at the top. “Today’s meeting topic. Who are these fuckers and why are they fucking with us?”
The Boss never held one of these meetings where neither he or the Underbosses didn’t already damn well know who “these fuckers” were. But everyone at the table worked with very different parts of Crime Alley’s diverse criminal biosphere, and they were all exposed to different types of information focused on what each subculture was most concerned with. By having everyone lay out what they’d gotten, a more complete picture could be put together and a better understanding reached. Or so Conrad had heard him wearily explain once to someone who’d thought they were on the fast track to Underboss-hood but really really hadn’t been.
Conrad was sat cross-legged on the couch along the far wall, stacks of paper set up around him to work through as he listened to the proceedings with half an ear. He’d let himself slightly disconnect from events. It was the White Skullz. He deserved to. It was either that or think about kids with their femurs sticking out and faces too battered to recognize gurgling final breaths as he tried to race them to a clinic. Or the others laying silently amongst beeping tubes and wires until money ran out.
Breath in. Hold. Three, four. And out. Two, three, four. Righteous fury later. Paperwork and gang meetings now.
With a nod from Hood, Petros stood up and walked around to the board. He was chewing on an unlit cigarette as he looked around at the other Underbosses. “The White Skullz. Shouldn’t even count as a proper gang; it’s an insult to anyone who’s ever run with a proper crew. Just a bunch of kids who’ve banded together to get their rocks off by putting a beatdown on any ‘undesirable’ they can catch on their own.” He didn’t do the air-quotes, but the distain in his voice slotted them into place just fine on its own.
“’Undesirables’ in this case meaning, in descending order, anyone who isn’t cis, anyone who isn’t straight, anyone who isn’t white, anyone who’s the wrong sort of white, women, and anyone who fails to measure up to their exacting standards of performative manliness.” Diamond leaned back in her chair, white-glitter encrusted lips in a straight line. Slice just gave a weary sigh which was answered by Wolf’s grunt from across the table. Cinder’s eyes flickered over to Conrad for just a moment, but he otherwise remained as impassive as ever.
“Not the first time we’ve had to deal with something like this, but we don’t have it as easy this go-around. The main problem are these assholes,” Smokes’ cigarette’s filter was nearly chewed off, but it held on as he used the cigarette to point at the six pictures hanging at the top of the board. Even from across the room, the issue was plain to see. Whereas the rest of the pictures were either snagged off social media, taken from surveillance footage, or straight up mug shots, the ones at the top were posed in suits and school uniforms, taken from society pages or yearbooks. “Heading up this band of degenerates are some good ol’ Bristol boys. They supply the safehouse, the drugs, the weapons, and the driving motivation. Meanwhile the rest of the crew,” a sharp wave downward at the fifteen or so pictures hanging underneath, “provide the local cachet to keep them from getting beaten to a pulp just for being here and the muscle to actually achieve the violence the Bristol boys cream themselves for.”
Hound had leaned forward, squinting at the top pictures with the eyes of someone who was going to resist getting glasses until their inability to figure out what was twenty feet in front of them earned them a bullet in the gut. Smokes continued, “Their normal OP seems to be gathering at their safehouse, getting drunk and high on whatever shit the Bristol boys are supplying that night, then once they’re good and rearing to go, they split up into groups of one to two Bristol boys with four to five Bowery boys and head out to hunt down someone isolated and vulnerable they can work out all their impotent frustrations on.”
This time it was Diamond whose eyes flickered over to Conrad for just a moment, the slightest crease of concern on her brow. Conrad registered it but didn’t respond. He was working. This was him at work.
“They’re a bunch of shriveled-cocked cowards, pissing blood at the first sign of someone who might be able to fight back, and never jump someone unless the odds are at least five to one in their favor.” Smokes’ nose winkled in disgust as he looked over the various mugshots and surveillance photos. “Hasn’t kept them from getting their kicks, though. We’ve got eight dead kids, ten in the hospital long-term, and at least thirty injured that we know for sure are theirs so far. And the little shits have only been on the street since late July, early August.”
Conrad’s personal confirmed list was ten dead and sixteen in the hospital. Those numbers almost doubled when he included the ones he was suspicious about but couldn’t prove. The White Skullz had been slowing down in the last two months, though. They were going out in larger groups. They were faster to break and run. He’d like to think it was all because of him, but Con doubted he’d be so lucky. More likely it was the inevitable learning process any fuckers who survived long enough went through.
Petros moved as if to take a puff of his cigarette before remembering it wasn’t lit. With a sigh, he turned to Red Hood, “At this point, anyone redeemable has fallen off. There were a couple of kids who didn’t realize what they were signing up for. A couple more who thought they knew but couldn’t stomach actually doing it. Everyone that’s left, though?” He snorted. “No one’s ever irredeemable,” Red Hood gave a silent shrug that conveyed he disagreed, but don’t stop on his account., “but these little shits come damn close. I don’t think there’s a single person at this table who wouldn’t fall under their definition of ‘Undesirable’. Along with most of the world, most of Gotham, and the vast majority of the Alley. They’d kill us all if they got the chance.”
Conrad tilted his head at that. He hadn’t expected Petros to include himself in that; he knew almost nothing about the man’s personal life, so that was on him for assuming, but still. It might also just be the Italian thing. The Skullz were the sorts of assholes who’d still count that as being Not White Enough.
Smokes ended his speech by gesturing at the board with his cigarette, still bravely holding together, with a motion that conveyed obscenity without being one. “If the outcry from Gotham’s Powers-That-Be wouldn’t lead to the GCPD sending down an army to steamroll the Alley flat, I’d say we just board up their base of operations and set the whole thing on fire. But six dead Bristol boys in one night would be the one thing that could actually get the cops to open an investigation on something down here, and their parents would demand the entire district be made an example of.”
He waved his hand to encapsulate the futility of life and its endless bullshit to the Boss, “So yeah, that’s my overview. All possible recruitment has been done, everything that’s left is kindling far as I’m concerned.” And with a nod to the other Underbosses, Peter returned to his chair, pausing just long enough to flick his current cigarette into the trash and popping a fresh one, still unlight, between his lips.
Hood nodded at him, then turned his helmet to Hound with an expectant air. The large man gruffed under his breath and hauled himself to his feet, taking up position at the board.
To Conrad, Hound always looked like a high school football coach had clocked off early and hit up a biker bar. Only the flashes of old faded tattoos for some long defunct Mexican biker gang that peaked out from under his long sleeves and collar hinted at what the rumor-mill suggested was a wild fucking past. Conrad had never bothered to dig into the details, but it was apparently a show’s worth of prime-time drama bullshit that’d started in Arizona and ended with him high and dry and abandoned in Gotham City at the age of 22. From there, he’d fallen into the standard mode of high-tier mook, bashing heads and keeping the peace for whatever gang boss or crime lord could earn his viciously ferocious loyalty.
Which was currently the Red Hood. And promised to stay the Red Hood until the heat death of the universe. The only sign of disagreement from the man with the Boss’ leadership had been over Conrad himself. As head of the gang’s security and street fighter wrangling, he’d taken it personally when Cinders looked to some baby-faced teenaged outsider to handle the security arrangements for the Shelter Network. Much less one who was…
Look. Even early on, it was apparent the Red Hood brokered no disrespect for sex workers or any form of queer identity. So Hound very pointedly had no disrespect for sex workers or any form of queer identity. That hadn’t kept Conrad from hearing the empty spaces where ‘Goddamn fucking boy-whore’ had been preemptively edited out of the man’s rants, though.
Regardless, when it became apparent that not only had the baby-faced teenage goddamn fucking boy-whore successfully pulled together a fairly passable security setup for the Shelter Network but was going to get even more responsibilities, Conrad became officially dead to him. The split second of eye contact when he’d first entered the room to find Con camped out on the couch before quickly turning and not so much as glancing towards that quarter of the room since had been the most interaction between the two in over a month.
It was a pity too, because the man was pretty damn good at what passed for troop management at the street level. Con could use some learning on that. And more ways to lay a beat down with just his fists. Or chains. It was hard to ensure you always had a bat on hand, after all.
(And while he was a decade or two older and with more fat to muscle than he usually preferred, Hound still had a nice ass and a back Con wouldn’t mind seeing laid out under him, with-)
Jesus , Conrad. Any excuse not to dwell on the subject, huh? Well women hiding from abusive boyfriends still need tampons and toilet paper, so get the fuck back to work.
“The main problem with these assholes is they just don’t respect the borders.” Hound jabbed a thick finger at the map of a section of the Alley and Bowyer with a couple of square blocks outlined in red. “Doesn’t matter how many times we go to beat it into their skulls,” Hound would never recognize he’d just made a joke, “they just can’t seem to understand that they can’t go fucking around wherever the fuck they want. They are damn fucking lucky they carved them out a spot between a bunch of,” and there was that split second mental editing again, “baby-assed guppies and the one gang with enough foresight not to just plug every last one of the milk-toothed shit-suckers square in the forehead.”
He took in a deep breath and snorted it out with a very bull-like noise, “We can’t even just station up some gunners and watchers of our own along the demarcation because those shits are just as likely to wander through three or four other pissants’ territories before swinging on over into ours. Only thing in our favor is they’re nearly always plastered as shit by the time they hit the streets and just can’t do ‘subtle’. Got all my boys on notice that if they hear drunken singing, check it out on the sly and radio that shit in the moment they see white face paint.”
He frowned, arms crossed and tapping out a pattern on one beefy bicep. He turned to look the Boss square on, voice softer and resigned. “We’re trying to keep our beatdowns non-lethal like you asked, but the shits just aren’t getting the message. It’s gonna be nothing we start, but eventually those fuckers are going to escalate and we’re going to wind up having to kill some. Sonner, more likely, than later.”
With another jerking nod of his head, Hound circled around back to his chair, muttering something under his breath in rapid-fire Spanish Conrad could only catch the edges of. Asking the patron saints of idiots to make sure they go to someone else’s territory to get themselves killed, he was pretty sure.
Diamond didn’t bother getting up from her chair. Conrad didn’t blame her. The ceiling on the second floor was low, and she already stood at six foot five even before the spiked heels and elaborate platinum-blond swoop and swirl of hair were taken into account. With skin so black it seemed just a few shades off from blue, and everything from her hair to her lipstick, fingernails, makeup, and clothes being variations of white covered with glitter and faux diamonds, she could command the attention of a room just by curling up on a stool in the backmost corner and lightly clearing her throat.
Con would’ve called it an affectation of her new position in Crime Alley’s social order, but she’d been dressing the same way since he knew her as the unofficial big sister of the Hyde Park-adjacent hustler boys and street girls. She sat forward, letting long glimmering fingernails tap against the tabletop as she spoke directly to the Boss. “Not much to add from our end of things. They beat two street boys to death before word spread and they all scattered. Most of the girls have followed suit. We’ve collected up a few and brought them in from the cold, and the rest we managed to find new corners to work after coming to understandings with the current residents.
“For now, we just keep an eye on what streets they’re patrolling the most, putting the word out, and keeping our workers as far away as we can, but especially the boys.” Her eyes once again flickered over to Conrad, who responded with a tight smile this time. He hadn’t been a Hyde Park adjacent hustler, he’d been a Hyde Park proper hustler, and he’d never been part of Diamond’s brood let alone cut her a percent. But she had still fretted over him like he’d been. Always with the blunt advice without any sugar coating and sternly worded ‘I told you so’s on those occasions Con had stumbled back to the Alley after an encounter gone wrong.
It’d been no surprise to him to find out she’d been approached on day one to handle Red Hood’s outreach to Crime Alley’s sex workers. If there was ever proof needed that Red Hood was a native Crime Alley kid or that he had only the best intentions for its people, that alone was enough.
His first day with the gang, while getting a tour of the abandoned tenement that was that month’s headquarters, he’d gotten a lung-crushing hug as she lifted him off the ground. So happy to see her “darling Connie, oh just look at you, boy! Still alive! So big! You made it, child! Look at you, you made it!” Then she patted him on the head like he was still 13 and glimmered off to the Red Hood’s office for whatever business she’d originally been there for, leaving Con with bruises across his ribs and a look of bafflement on his face. He hadn’t even known she could do happy until that moment.
Slice leaned forward next. She came by her name honestly; by keeping nearly a dozen thin concealed blades strapped to herself at all times, and possessing cheekbones that could cut glass if she ever leaned against a window. Her words were much the same way, soft spoken and conversational, but with a sharp edge that glinted all the brighter when she was tearing into someone. Her shoulders were lightly hunched, the only sign to her displeasure with the topic of conversation. “Not much to report on my front. They don’t buy from anyone; their leaders supply everything themselves, mostly from the parental medicine cabinets and party favors if what I’ve heard is anything to go by. They don’t sell to anyone either, unless you count taking a few extra home with them to pass around to their buddies or coworkers.”
Her fingers played with the air. The pattern of cuts and scarring across the table in front of her seat the main reason why Red Hood had kindly requested she not use her knives as a tension reliever during meetings any longer. “If they ever do start selling, however, I’m fully expecting anything they sell to a non-white customer is gonna be laced with some shit or another, so we’re keeping a careful eye to make sure they don’t start.” She shrugs, eyes hard as flint as she stared into the middle distance. “That’s all I got.”
There was more there, obviously, but it felt personal and the roundtables were about word on the street and facts, not personal wrongs and vendettas. So the Boss left it alone, though he had very clearly marked it for later.
Wolf cleared his throat and stood up, though he stayed in front of his chair. The burly mountain of a man had his wild grey-brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail, with his beard similarly tamed with a few thin hide straps. His jeans were untorn, if tight around his legs, and there wasn’t a single bloodstain on either his jacket or his shirt. Conrad could only assume he was meeting with a new potential supplier or buyer later that evening, it was about the only thing that could make the man tone down his feral Viking shtick to a dull roar.
“Not much different than Slice, honestly.” He started, the gravely undertone to his voice even rougher than usual with irritation at the lack of information to share. “They don’t bring anything in, they don’t send anything out. They don’t seem to care about any supply lines that pass through their territory, or even that they exist. Melee weapons are lifted straight from the store, and guns are brought down from Bristol.”
He snorted, giving a shake of his head that would normally send his mane cascading in all sorts of directions. “Either one of their dads is into weapons manufacturing, or someone’s got a shitload of explaining to do the next time daddy cracks open the gun safe.” He paused, and his expression hardened as he half whispered, “Unless dad’s supplying them knowingly…” There was a second or two of silence as Wolf pondered on that before snapping back into focus.
“Anyways. Main problem on this side is that we got to reroute all the runners and carriers around their territory along with wherever they’re fucking around any given night. One of my girls is gonna be in the hospital for at least another few weeks, and two of my boys are permanently retired after getting cornered by those shits. Only saving grace is they don’t even clock vehicles, so we can always just drive shit through if we’re on a time limit. Otherwise…”
Massive shoulders shrugged, “We’ve got hammers primed for when it’s time to bring them down on the little shits. Till then, we’re just keeping everyone out of their path best we can.”
Wolf sat back down, his chair creaking at the sudden impact of weight. As one, everyone turned to look at the last Underboss to report. Cinders stood up and gave a stretch that audibly cracked a few vertibre back into place before covering the couple of steps between him and the board.
Turning on his heel, he looked the rest of the Underbosses over, even shooting a glance Conrad’s way. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth weren’t smile related, but they did add a bit more smug amusement into his scowl than usually existed. “Now, no one’s mentioned it, which isn’t surprising because I only know it because of all the land records and building permits I have to dig through these days-”
A noise that wasn’t a cough but wasn’t not a cough came from Red Hood. Cinder tilted his head slightly to glance at the Boss and cut the rest of his sentence off to move ahead without otherwise acknowledging it. “Their safehouse is in the penthouse of a pre-Quake tenement owned by one of the Bristol boys’ father.”
From his coat pocket, he pulled out a polaroid of a balding man and smacked it dramatically against the board just above one of the smirking yearbook photos. In barely a second, he had it pinned, and a fresh pieces of string leading to both the kid and the pin at the center of the territory map below. It was too far away for Conrad to make it out clearly, but he’d bet that picture was one of Cinder’s creepy “Poloid taken through a rifle scope” pictures he seemed to delight in taking.
“Needless to say, this fine upstanding member of Gotham’s ruling elite was already in my sights as a possible target for Operation Fuck Landlords-
Operation Fuck Landlords was Cinder’s personal pet project and his main reason for trying to pawn as much of his workload off on his underlings as he could get away with. Conrad, of course, knew nothing about Operation Fuck Landlords, what its goals were, what its methods were, or how many private estates of slumlords with holdings in Crime Alley had gotten burned to the ground in recent months. If indeed that’s what Operation Fuck Landlords was all about. Which he wouldn’t know. Couldn’t even tell you if O:FL was a real thing.
The fact that various front companies whose chain of ownership eventually lead back to whatever Cinder’s legal identity was this year had been able to buy up swaths of Crime Alley real-estate at bargain prices as their owners liquidated assets to pay for the rebuilding of manors and estates was just a happy coincidence. One that Conrad, again, would know nothing about.
-but I think it’s safe to say he’s getting moved up the list in light of these discoveries. I doubt it’ll do much to slow these fascist wannabe fucks down any, but I strongly believe that focusing on destroying their ability to draw on parental support is probably the only way to defuse this whole shitpile without having to do something the whole Alley will suffer for for years to come. Now, I’ve been doing some light digging on the other parents, and with the Boss’ kind permission, I have a few ideas…”
To Cinder’s credit, it was a good plan. It probably would’ve worked too.
00ooOoo00
NOW
“Well, it sounds to me like your organization’s intelligence is a little out of date, kiddo.” Matches groused as he followed Conrad and Zachery down the steps to the Lucas Trent Center’s boiler room. Con had been multitasking, laying out the bare bones of what the White Skullz were about while at the same time pulling together the equipment needed for his next plan and maybe a few others after.
Con shook his head. “Two nights ago, one of my guys ran into a Skullz band up to their usual and it was fucking textbook.” Vines had been shaking a little when they’d gotten back to report on all the shit they’d been through. Grinning and nearly vibrating from adrenalin, too. “They look scrawnier than they are, which must be why the Skullz thought they had a shot. But the moment V shot one in the arm and hit another in the jaw with a tire-iron,” Match’s pained wince at those words had the strong suggestion of someone who’d taken a tire-iron to the face before. “they scattered like they always do when faced with someone who can fight back.”
The door to the boiler room swung open easily; meant the first round of maintenance he’d been hammering out right before his sudden promotion had gotten done. The lights buzzed on. Old style incandescents, a good two thirds of them burnt out, with a forest of cobwebs draped across the undersides of the rest muddying out the light; which meant the second round of maintenance he’d been hammering out hadn’t gotten done. He’d need to take care of that. Add it to the list.
Conrad just snapped on the electric lamp he was carrying and Zach hurriedly did the same with his. They weren’t as bright as flashlights, but they also didn’t just illuminate a tight beam. Con figured the kid would do better with an all-around light source in the tunnels. Besides, just from glancing over, it looked like the lamp Zach had grabbed was noticeably brighter than his anyways. Lucky kid, he got the best of both worlds.
“Just makes it stranger for them to turn on a dime like that, then.” Matches mused as he followed the two of them through the tight confines of the room. “Punks like that don’t tend to flip their behavior between one day and the next unless something else’s at work.” Malone was back to using his oily smile voice and Conrad found himself very glad that Angela had managed to find some sweats that could fit him, even if they were distressingly tight. All the more reason for Con to be ahead of the man. He didn’t need any further distractions tonight of all nights.
‘Okay sure’, the traitorous voice in the back of his mind had been saying, ‘you’ve already gotten Topping a Crime Lord crossed off your bucket list, but, and just a thought buddy, have we considered adding Topping Two Different Crime Lords to the list instead?’
Which just. No.
‘At least turn around and enjoy the view while you can; someone’s going to find a shirt that fits him before much longer.’
And again, No.
Was it the active threat of death that turned on the horny? Because that would explain so much about his teenage years.
Squeezing around the mass of the broiler and its heat, they pushed into the metal maze that made up the back of the room. Half the piping in there was probably superfluous by that point, part of older systems long since decommissioned, but Conrad had never had the time to dedicate a day or two to poking around and tracing everything and figuring out which ones they’d be. The end result was an industrial tangle, some of it rusting, some of it hot, all of it in the way. For a bulky guy, though, Matches ducked and weaved around the obstructions with as much ease as the two kids half his age.
“I can’t imagine this is just them. Sure, the one kid’s parents own a miltech company they could’ve scammed some sort of jamming tech from, but the rest of it?” Conrad scowled at Zachery’s back as the kid used his brighter lantern to light the way forward. “You’d need to know about our schedules, who was already going to be out today, the existence of the emergency lockers, who on staff had access to the emergency lockers, and whatever other surprises are waiting for us, and I just can’t see those assholes managing even half of that without us catching on that they were hunting for information.”
Matches hrmmed under his breath, broken only by a grunt as he squeezed his way between two pipes that Conrad and Zach had already cleared of cobwebs and grime with their passing. The man was going to have fascinating smears across his chest and back when they were done.
Not. The. Time.
“They might’ve just applied pressure to a single individual. Who do you have working for you that would have access to all of that information?” he asked, once they were through.
Conrad couldn’t help but snort, “Don’t start down that line of thought, Mr. Malone. Right now, the only person at the Center who’s been stationed everywhere you’d need to be to get all the required information is your very helpful nephew.”
Before Matches could respond, Zach called over his shoulder from a bit ahead “Uh, not meaning to interrupt, but I’m at a blank wall. Did I take a wrong turn or something?”
“Nah, one sec, I’ve got you.” Con thanked fortuitous interruptions and passed his lantern over to the kid. Squeezing past him, he faced the stonework wall with dust and cobwebs layered so thick it was like a second coat of mortar. Still, enough of the stylized brickwork that’d been laid in when the room was a small underground bar was visible through it to figure out which of the brick columns was the one he was looking for. A solid line of stone cut across about four feet up along the wall, breaking it into halves. If he remembered right, it was the lower column. Count five bricks down, grip, count down two more, grip that brick too. Push to the right where the mortar looked extra crumbly under the dust and cobweb covering and with luck the mechanism… There was a click and sound of stone and metal shifting from somewhere inside the wall before the four-foot wide section swung out on hinges hidden in the next brick column over.
“Fuck me. What’s this haunted house Scooby Doo shit doing down here?” Zach breathed out as he craned over Con’s shoulder to peer into the murky depths the open door revealed.
“One of the old Prohibition tunnels,” Con explained for what felt like the fifth time that week. “Park Row was a properly fancy ritzy district back then. All those rich fancy people don’t like getting arrested in liquor raids, so all the underground bars had little bolt tunnels of one type or another. Usually just to a place across the street or a few buildings over, but some reached further. In places, you’ve got whole little networks where a couple of different tunnels from different bars wound up overlapping, so now you’ve got a dozen different places linked together.
“Very few of them were closed up after shit got legalized again; they’re too shallow to run into the sewers, maintenance tunnels, or subways; and they’re too cramped to make a good underground lair or meth lab, so a lot of them’ve just been sitting intact and abandoned ever since. Come in real handy when you need to duck past a specific street you’ve pissed off the current owners of.”
Zach pushed past to start investigating and Con watched him with a rueful smile before stiffening suddenly. Matches had somehow gotten past the final cluster of pipes and appeared just over his shoulder without a sound. No wonder they kept him in multiple layers of pleather and polyester. The man was too quiet without rustling clothes to give him away. “Howdya even know about this?” the crime boss wondered, reaching over Con’s shoulder to run a hand along where the bricks of the door would meet the bricks of the wall when it was closed. “I’d never even heard of em.”
Con shrugged as much as he could without nudging the bare arm (which was way too big and way too thick for comfort), “The adults would talk about shit like this when I was a kid sometimes. After I wound up on the streets, I remembered hearing about them and went hunting. There were a couple of major ones I knew about for certain. After that, it became something to do to pass the time. Figure out what buildings had been around in the 30s, break into their basements, and fiddle around with the stonework to see if anything moved.”
He carefully slid over to the side, letting Malone in closer without any further awkwardness, “I eventually decided it was easier to avoid problems via the rooftops instead, but I still remember the ones I found. Secret bolt-holes that’ve gone unused for ninety years and no one seems to remember seemed like a handy feature for the Shelters that served at-risk groups, so I always suggested places that had them as possible locations. Figured if nothing’s collapsed, Zach should be able get past the edge of the communications lockout and send out a proper call for help. If it’s clear enough where it comes out and shit’s gone south, we might even be able to get everyone evacuated through it with any luck.”
“Um…” echoed from down the tunnel where a faint glimmer of light bobbed around, “About that, Big C…” When did Big C become a nickname? Who’d okayed that? Conrad was going to have to update the Absolutely Not list again. Bat-Man and Bat Boy were about to get company.
“What’s up, Zacky?” Matches called, and Con could almost see the shaking of the kid’s head by the way the lantern light moved.
“I think we’re fucked is what’s up.” Was all he replied with. Con and Matches exchanged a warry glance. “Seriously, you should probably come and look at this. Please tell me I’m not seeing what I’m seeing.”
“It’d be the first time.” Matches breathed under his breath as he grabbed the second lantern and started jogging down towards the light. Conrad followed after. This set of tunnels always left him a little on edge. It looked like it was paved with dirt, but that was just because of all the earth that’d sifted through the boards of the ceiling over the decades covering the matching wooden boards of the floor. It was tight. Con could reach up and run his fingers along the ceiling. He could stretch out his arms and place both palms flat against the wall. The support timbers looked half rotted and always creaked worryingly whenever he walked on connecting floorboards. The few times he’d made use of this particular tunnel, he’d always hurried through as quickly as he could.
It was probably a good thing he hadn’t taken the lead this time.
Zachery had his lantern up high, slowly swaying it back and forth and letting the light flash off… Con hissed in through his teeth. Trip wires glistened like they were covered in oil, stretching back and forth around ankle height, nearly hidden in the fallen earth and dust. Bundles of wires and bits of metal against the walls looked like basic pressure sensors, waiting for the weight of anything heavier than a cat causing the individual boards to sag and snap the connection between the parts on the floor and the wall and sending signals…
Con traced discrete wires that glittered strangely in the electric lamps’ light back to… “Shit.”
“Do you think it’s armed?” Zach’s voice was surprisingly level and calm, sounding almost curious as he gestured to the bundle of cylinders, wires, and electronics half a dozen meters further down the tunnel.
“Armed, yes.” Matches replied after a long moment of consideration. “But not triggered. Given what we’ve seen of their planning so far,” Malone’s voice had dipped into something very different from even the cold level tone he’d used when talking about Zach’s former parents. Almost military. That wasn’t the right term for it, Con thought distractedly, but something close. That was a voice that’d snap for a report and you’d damn well supply it. “I would lay money on that being deactivatable from the other direction. If we didn’t try to evacuate through the tunnels and collapse the whole thing down on our head, they’d be able to disarm the explosives and come through from the other direction. They’d bypass all of the Center’s lockdown contingencies and could march in completely unobstructed.”
“Cool. Cool.” Zach said in a tone that suggested that it was in fact not at all cool cool. “Any way we could get over there and disarm it without triggering anything?”
Con’s eyes darted back and forth down the length of the tunnel, taking in the multilayered trip wires, pressure plates, and what looked like a couple of cheap webcams set up as motion detectors. If there was a way through all that with setting something off, he couldn’t see it.
“Not without taking more hours than we have,” Matches growled, and fuck. It didn’t matter how many hours you gave Conrad; he just couldn’t see a way past. Not unless you deployed some sort of non-reflective canvas to muddle the cameras’ ability to detect motion and have a bunch of tools that could work while extended a yard or two out… “None of its particularly complex, but they’ve made up for it in quantity. They may not have an over-abundance of skill, but they certainly didn’t lack for materials.”
“Well. Shit.” And with that succinct summation of events, Zachery lowered his lantern and sighed heavily. Even the light seemed dimmer after that, the wires merging into the shadows without the strangely reflective glimmering they’d had in direct lantern light.
Con ran his hands across the shaved sides of his head, trying to pull at hair he hadn’t had for years now. “Okay.” fuck “So we can’t do this the easy way. We need to get back and start prepping the hard way solutions while we still can. They seem happy waiting for now, but that’s not going to last.”
“Agreed.” And it was creepy hearing Matches Malone speaking in that clipped focused tone. “Let’s go S-onny.” Zachery scrambled after his uncle, leaving Conrad alone with his one lantern looking at what little of the elaborate explosive trap was still visible.
It dug at something in his chest. These tunnels were his. He’d never run into anyone else when using them, he’d hardly ever even seen evidence of anyone else when using them. They were the closest thing he’d had to a sanctuary during his first few years on his own, the dirt and the crap in the air notwithstanding. When the shelters were full, and he’d pissed off too many minor gangs, and the wannabe pimps were hunting, and the unmarked vines were idling, he’d always had the tunnels. They were safe, they were never too cold, they were never too hot. He could curl up with jackets wrapped around him and know that he was safe.
Seeing evidence that someone else had been in the tunnels was one thing. Having them turn the one place of absolute assured safety into a death trap was something else entirely. It didn’t make things personal. It didn’t stir his rage or strengthen it. But it did sharpen, his rage honing itself to a razor’s edge.
Turning, Conrad stalked out of the tunnels leaving nothing but total darkness behind him.
00ooOoo00
Matches’ mood turned dark after the tunnels. Conrad wasn’t sure if it was because of the bomb they’d discovered - evidence of just how much preparation and planning had gone into the night’s events and how grievously unprepared they all were – or because of the shirt Angela proudly held out for them when they’d returned up to the Common Room. It was large, but the head of the Malone crime family was larger. Normally, Con was of the opinion that skin-tight pink and purple t-shirts that showed off the midriff and barely get halfway down the bicep were even more obscene than just going shirtless. But normally Con hadn’t been hanging around a shirtless Matches Malone for nearly an hour and right now he was just happy that the man was finally wearing something.
A faded pink t-shirt with “Unicorn Princess” spelled out in sparkly rainbow purple across the front and an actual unicorn made out of the same across the back wasn’t the usual sort of thing a crime boss would wear, and he could see how it might’ve soured Mr. Malone’s mood. It did make the surly brooding much more hilarious than it would’ve been otherwise, certainly.
Con was doing his best to ignore the older man’s growing storm cloud; he had shit that needed to be done. A quick glance at the clock confirmed it was 11:15. The security monitors still had the arrayed ranks of Skullz standing and waiting, illuminated starkly in the blazing red light of the Center’s emergency sign. If it wasn’t for the constantly advancing storefront clock visible from one of the cameras, Con would’ve been repeatedly checking that no one had looped the footage on them.
It was 11:16 and they were still waiting. The same itch that’d been in the back of his mind since the start of everything was almost certain shit would kick off at midnight. On the dot. It was exactly the kind of needlessly dramatic precise bullshit that’d fit everything else so far.
He could finish what he needed to do before then. On their way back up from the tunnels, he had grabbed the three emergency lockers that were stationed around the Lucas Trent Center for nights just like this one. Not specifically like this one, maybe, but for all the other nights that also fell under the nebulous umbrella of “I never expected this to happen, but it’s fucking Gotham so of course it did.” In cases where whatever ‘this’ was happened to be vulnerable to bullets, at least.
The concept was simple. Every shift was supposed to have two people who’d passed the Hood Gang’s weapons testing on staff. They’d have the access codes and the discretion on when to use them and how. It was Crime Alley – Hell, it was Gotham – so the hard part hadn’t been finding weapons capable applicants, just getting everyone all certified to Red Hood’s exacting specifications (as determined by Conrad). Once the initial flood got through the system though, it’d continued to flow swimmingly. To the point where it was now standard for three to four of each shift’s eight staff to have the certifications needed and the access codes it earned them.
And despite all that, if Conrad hadn’t decided to come down in person tonight to deal with the issues in person there would’ve been no one here, and fifty kids would’ve been slaughtered with the means to defend themselves sitting inaccessible feet from their fallen bodies. It was an image he was doing his best to keep from fully manifesting in his mind, shoving it back into the depths whenever it drifted back in.
Conrad had determined the loadouts when he’d first implemented the lockers, but each shelter’s staff had made their own additions and subtractions in the time since, and he needed to familiarize himself with what they had available while also ensuring he wasn’t about to hand out knives too dull to cut or guns that’d explode in some kid’s hand the first time the tried to fire.
Matches sat in his chair across the table, arms crossed, furrowed brow casting his face in shadow save for the reflective sheen off his aviators. The man was obviously trying to silently communicate something to him, but Conrad didn’t know the man well enough to interpret what it could be without dedicating far more mental energy to it than he had to spare.
Out in the Common Room, Angela was overseeing the kids as they got themselves organized by whether they knew how to fight, if they knew how to use weapons, if they knew how to use guns, if they ever fought against an adult, and if they ever won a fight against an adult. Rather, Angela was sitting on the big plush office chair that was usually behind the office desk and being allowed to relax while Zachery and the two volunteers from the kitchen managed the organizing for her.
The room was silent. There was the sea-wave swells of noise drifting in from the Common Room, the metallic clacks and clicks as guns and pieces were moved around, the slow deliberate breathing of a brooding mob boss, his own blood pumping in his ears as the seconds became minutes and the silence kept stretching.
“Kiddo.” Matches broke the silence without shifting an inch. Conrad had the sudden sense memory of Red Hood brooding at his desk and doing the same when he finally spoke. Maybe it was something they taught in Crime Lord Correspondence School. “You don’t have to take this approach.”
Con glanced up sharply, slotting the pieces of the current handgun back together without looking. “Which approach?”
“This one.” Matches stopped being carved out of stone and reached forward to pick up the finished gun he had just placed down, examining it with the same unreadable expression. “Killing isn’t going to solve this, you have to know that. You’re a good kid, Conrad; you’re better than this.”
Con’s hands stilled and he looked up slowly. He didn’t know what expression was on his face, but whatever it was, it was enough for Matches to make the slightest minute shift in his posture. It took a few seconds of steady breathing before the dull throbbing in his limbs faded and he could wholly feel his body again. As clearly as he could, Conrad enunciated, “No. I’m not.” And returned to his work.
“Not what?” Matches finally said after a long stretch of uncomfortable silence.
“A good person.” Conrad took a deep breath and hurriedly talked over whatever platitudes Matches was about to deliver, “I’ve had this conversation before, so just listen to me on this. Please, Mr. Malone.”
Another gun was placed on the successfully checked side of the table. His hands continued to move by instinct, only fumbling slightly from his split in concentration. “I don’t know if it’s my genetics from a long line of terrible people who thought working for supervillains was a great idea, or if it’s getting raised by terrible people who thought working for supervillains was a great idea, or getting raised in the active warzone that is Crime Alley, or just the shitloads of lead in the dirt and the air and the paint or all the crazy contaminants in the water supply and the monthly gassings. Whatever it is, the result’s the same; I am straight up not a good person.”
He raised his eyes to look Malone straight in the glasses, meeting his own gaze in their reflection. “I don’t give a shit about people who aren’t Mine. I don’t care when they’re hurt, I don’t care when they die, and I don’t care when either happens to them because of me.” He turned his eyes back down to his work because he never liked watching someone’s face while talking about this.
“What I consider a proper response to aggression, or acceptable levels of violence to bring against someone are far beyond what society at large considers appropriate.” Which was putting it mildly. He’d learned that one early, fortunately before he’d gotten permanently kicked out of elementary school like a number of his siblings had been. High school, though…
“I know, intellectually, that locking all those fuckers,” he jabbed a gun barrel at the security monitors like it was a finger, “in a basement and flooding it while they bang on the doors and drown is the wrong thing to do.” Malone made a noise, but Conrad refused to interpret it.
“But it feels like the right thing to do. Nothing of value would be lost. It would be quick, easy, and best of all, final. And I’d sleep as well the night after I did it as I do any other night.” He grimaced at the gun in his hand as faces and names started bubbling up from the depths of his mind before he could shove them back under. “Only difference would be I wouldn’t be adding to the list of dead kids I have to remember…”
Maybe that gun he’d put down with more force than strictly needed. His bad.
“Now it’s not like I don’t realize this is a fucking problem.” That had been the last of the hand-guns. Con tossed the cleaning rag he’d been using aside and pulled out a fresh one before reaching for the shot gun. “I don’t like being like this. I grew up surrounded by people just like this and raised by people just like this who were all working for people just like this. None of us were happy. Or content. Or at peace. Or whatever the default is supposed to be. And nothing any of us were doing were ever going to let us reach that point. Or let anyone else ever reach it either.”
Matches hadn’t tried to say anything so far, and Con was grateful. This was hard enough without interruptions. “Most of my life has been spent trying to hammer together some sort of framework I could use to not be like that. My first attempt was to push the boundaries of what people counted as Mine. It was a… mixed success.” He could probably learn a lot about Matches by watching his reactions to this monolog, but that’d require looking at him and fuck that shit. “Sure, I can care about a lot more people now, but that also means there are a lot more deaths I’m going to take personally.”
Like everyone in the building. Because street kids, queer kids, and people below him in whatever passed for an org chart in a semi-legitimate gang? Those all counted as His.
The shotgun was fine. Everything had been fine. It was all very well maintained. Con would have to give his props to the guys in charge of maintaining the lockers once they got out of the current shitstorm. It was making for quick work. “The Batman rule is my best attempt so far.”
Had he ever told Matches about this before? No, not tonight, certainly. And by the time Conrad had started developing it, Matches Malone had already betrayed Two Face and was no longer welcome at family dinners. “Before I set out to do anything, I ask myself if doing what I’m about to do could in any way result in Batman wanting to punch me in the throat. If I can’t answer one-hundred percent no, I don’t do the thing. It’s lost me plenty of jobs, more than a few friends, and a lot of what were probably totally legit opportunities. But it’s been seven years since I’ve gotten attacked by a single person in Kevlar and a cape, so I count it as a net positive.”
The knives all looked well sharpened, but he was giving them all a quick check and polish just to make sure. The last thing he wanted was for one of the kids to slice their hand open because a too-dull blade had gotten caught between some fascist’s ribs. “I’m not a good person, but it’s my deepest hope that I can at least make it through life without ever becoming a bad one.”
His lips twitched in a fond smile despite himself and his eyes went distant. “And of course, these days I’ve got the Boss as my fallback.”
His brain didn’t process the exact words, but the general sense of vocal confusion filtered through. Conrad glanced up to see that Matches had taken his glasses off again and was looking at him with the same disquieted puzzlement that the gremlins had when watching a dog-sized rat with purple-sheened fur crawl out of the storm drain the previous spring. Though then it’d been a mix of disbelief that something like it could exist, worry about it attacking, and a desire to adopt it and collar it and call it Princess Lavendar; he wasn’t sure what Match’s exact thought mix currently was.
Oh, right. All those childhood memories of the man seated at the dining table and exchanging crude jokes with his da///Mykola kept resulting in Matches getting marked as Family in Conrad’s mind, but being over for a few dinners wouldn’t have left him knowing anymore about his parents’… “specialized philosophies” than anyone else.
The weapons were all fine. He had to trust the staff knew what they were doing. He wasn’t a micromanager. He didn’t have to touch everything himself. They’d been doing a fantastic job and he’d need to tell them once this shitshow was concluded.
Conrad pushed the rest of the work aside to look at Matches honestly; exposed eyes seemed important for the man. His good will would be an immense benefit to the Red Hood and his future plans, and Con wouldn’t nurture that by not explaining a statement like that. Now how was he going to explain this.
“It’s not that complicated at the core. I work for the Red Hood. He’s my Boss-“ Conrad’s mouth paused partially opened as, for the first time, he processed the capital letter he’d been using for… How long, now? He rolled the realization around in his mind before carefully setting it aside to be dealt with at a later time. Soon. But not now.
“He’s my Boss,” Con continued like he hadn’t stopped midsentence. “and this,” he waved a hand at the Center around them, “is his. This is his territory. This is his property. These are his people. People he has pledged to protect. They are here because he promised they would be safe while they slept in his beds within his walls and under his roof. The Red Hood may not be here, but I am. Which makes it my responsibility to ensure that everything the Red Hood would do if he was here gets done. The people he would’ve saved get saved, the things he would’ve protected stay protected. And that all of it’s done the way he would’ve done it himself.”
It was the core of a Hench’s duty, after all.
“But it’s so -stupid-. You had him tied up! He was defenseless! Everyone had guns! You could’ve just shot him right in the head then and there; he’d never be a threat to you or your boss ever again! Why didn’t you? I don’t fucking get it, dad!”
“Because I wasn’t there as myself, Bianca sweetpea. I was there for Two-Face. It doesn’t matter how much easier shooting the little shit would’ve made life, that’s not what Mr. Dent wanted. He wanted the shark tank, so that’s what he got. It’s my duty as a lieutenant-“
“As a fucking henchman, you mean.”
“Whatever you want to call it, sweatpea. It’s what you do. Mr. Dent knows as well as us that a gun would’ve worked. He knows the arguments, he knows his approach was more likely to fail, but despite all that he wanted to do it anyway. If I was there as Mykola, sure, I would’ve shot the fucking kid right in his smug little face. But I was there as Two-Face’s lieutenant. So we had the shark tank, and the crane arm with the timing mechanism, and the two buttons for the Bat to chose between, and all the rest.”
“So whatever he wants is what you’re stuck with?”
“Well, sweetpea, that’s why you gotta make sure you choose the right Boss when the time comes.”
“I just want one who doesn’t use shark tanks.”
“When you’re older, you’ll appreciate the simple beauty and pleasure that can be found in a good shark tank.”
Okay, that was an unsettling memory to have flash across his mind in that specific moment.
Fortunately, Matches took his sudden silence to mean he’d finished with his explanation. He’d leaned back in his chair, t-shirt stretched to the point of tearing across his broad chest as he tapped his aviators against his chin and pondered Conrad with a faintly sad expression. That was why Con didn’t like getting into his family shit. People always wound up looking at him like that.
“So. As a representative of the Red Hood’s will,” and Malone’s voice was thick with… Concern? Worry? Anger? Indigestion? It was all feeling very strange, “what are your moral constraints for tonight?”
Conrad sighed and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He’d call it a blatant attempt to dig for information on a professional rival, but everything he knew about Matches said he would be much more subtle about that kind of shit. Besides, none of it was a secret; the Red Hood wore his morals on his sleeve, announced them from the rooftops, and confirmed them with high caliber enforcement.
“The primary goal for tonight is to save these kids,” he started, and Matches nodded like he was judging an oral assignment. Con had the sudden urge to chuck something at him. “Secondary goal was originally to save the Center as a whole, but that’s been dropped down to third because ‘Keep a rival mob boss from dying on the Boss’ turf and under the protection of one of his Underbosses’ ranks above that.”
“What, I’m not number one?” It didn’t fit quite right on him, but the self-aware sleazily charming grin was back, and the man’s body was slowly relaxing back out into something resembling his original baring. “If those kids weren’t so sweet, I’d be offended.”
Con just shot him a quick smirk, “Considering your nephew is included among them, I figured you’d be in agreement of that one.” Matches just gave a lazy shrug and leaned back in his chair. “Anyways. After that, the rough order is keeping myself safe, learning exactly how they pulled all this shit off, then finally breaking and scattering the Skullz permanently.”
He let out a rushing sigh and scrubbed at the shaven sides of his head, “And despite how personally fulfilling it might be, I will be doing my best to accomplish it all without killing a single one of those fucking shits. For one thing, having multiple Bristol boys killed by a savage Crime Alley ganger thug would bring down a shitstorm that’d make the whole Wayne fuckery look like nothing. Forget just removing all funding and services and protection and waiting for us all to die of neglect, the Powers That Be wont stop until the entirety of Crime Alley’s been flattened and turned into the Park Row Martha Wayne Memorial Parking Lot.” Matches had nothing to say to that, and really, what was there to add?
“Much more importantly, the Boss has been pulling back on the lethal force lately. He’s got some sort of nonaggression deal set up with the Bats that’s contingent on him not killing people. I don’t know the details, but I do know it’s important to him, and I don’t want to be the one who fucks that up.” Matches gave a surprised grunt at that, which Con shot him a look for. The Hood’s tentative semi-alliance with the Batman and his extended clan wasn’t widely known, but it was hardly a secret. It shouldn’t have been something he’d be surprised by.
“And of course,” Conrad finished, “managing all of that while not doing anything that’d draw out the Bat to punch me in the throat.”
“You seem strangely fixated on getting punched in the throat by Batman.” Matches commented, an indulgent smile playing on his lips.
“Yeah, well. I saw a lot of my relatives go through post-Bat recovery. My one uncle still doesn’t have use of his arm, cousin Erik probably still has that limp, and Auntie Natalie’s never stopped having the headaches and double-vision shit.” Matches let out a disquieted noise as he glanced to the side. Con could only imagine the sorts of lingering Bat-inflicted trauma that existed among his own family. “And I’ve gotten punched in the throat before by non-vigilantes, and that was bad enough. So I think it’s a perfectly valid thing to be focused on.”
“Fair enough.” Matches said, then nodded at the reclosed cases. “Still arming the kids despite the no-kill rule?” He asked, though with less of an edge than before.
“Yeah,” Conrad sighed. “I’m still hoping to fix this with bat and fists alone, but I’m not going to leave them armed with nothing but switch blades and sticks when getting stormed by a bunch of murderous fascist bigots armed with assault rifles and gats. I don’t like fighting with guns, especially in places with so many non-combatants behind paper thing walls, but I’m not going to consign a bunch of kids to fucking death because of it.”
Malone’s mouth twisted in an unusual way, but he dropped the subject, and barely a trace of scowl crossed his face as he helped Conrad lug the weapons lockers out to the common room and started getting the kids armed.
00ooOoo00
It was 11:57 and Conrad’s veins were singing.
The wind on the roof of the Lucas Trent Center was biting as it whipped through the canyons of Gotham. The hint of winter’s fangs sent chilling cold up Conrad’s spine with every fresh gust. If this kept up, he’d be having to break out the sleeved jackets by the end of the month, and if that wasn’t a perfect capstone to the night, he didn’t know what was.
He, Matches, Zachery, and an assortment of other Center residents too old to order around or too stubborn to be kept downstairs were gathered around the parapets to look down at the street down below. Conrad had his modified batting gloves on, weighted studs along the knuckles for better punching, weak magnets in the fingers to give just an extra bit of grip. He had his bat in hand, three different knives strapped to his body, and a single holdout pistol in his back pocket. In his jacket pockets, he had a half dozen aerodynamic pieces of rubble, a package of police-grade zipties, and a small padded case that held three uncracked smoke bomb pellets he’d scavenged from the aftermath of Bat battles over the past few years.
Matches had his original clothes back on, with his trenchcoat collar popped, parrot shirt half unbuttoned, and was doing his best gargoyle scowl down at the gang. He’d refused even the brass knuckles Con had offered and he was still in his fucking dress shoes.
Zachery hadn’t been allowed to grab any of the weapons, but he did have six high powered laser-pointers fastened together into a single eye-searing ranged weapon in his hands. Conrad was certain Calib would approve of its temporary loan for use against such a worthy foe. The grin that split across the kid’s face when Con passed it over seemed out of proportion, but Z assured him it was the best thing he could’ve gotten. He was happy, that was the important thing.
It was 11:58 and the constant drizzle shimmered like glittering ruby shards under the red glare of the Center’s emergency lighting, spinning and sparkling in the corners of his vision. Every shift of fabric against his skin, every movement by the clustered bodies around him, the sound of a dozen lungs breathing in and out was vivid and bright to his senses. Every second was extended to be carefully examined for details, possible reactions to its contents carefully considered, and then placed aside before it had time to pass. He could recognize individuals among the Skullz ranks below. The Bristol boy asshole who’d broken Juan’s leg a week before was in front. He’d snapped ribs of the one two back on the right. He’d seen the pair by the edge in patrols more often than anyone else. They were four stories down, but every detail was as sharp and clear as if they were close enough to touch.
It was 11:59 and Conrad was a coiled spring vibrating from the pressure of keeping its own energy from releasing.
-------
He’d stopped off on their way up the stairs. The weapons had been passed out. The kids shown how to build barriers out of bullet-proofed tables. The extra locks and barriers on the upstairs bedrooms were explained. Suggested places for defenders to wait in cover and for the least combat capable to hide were given. A final ‘Hey, I’m just going to head out with my bat and have a little talk with everybody, I’m sure it’s going to be fine.‘ speech was given. It was just minutes to midnight and the security cameras were showing the Skullz outside starting to shift and flex with rising anticipation.
He’d stopped off at the bathrooms on their way up the stairs. He’d grabbed a single stall toilet, one where you could lock the door. Most of the shelter staff from across the network didn’t like the lockable bathroom doors. There’d been too many cases of people ODing in privacy and no one being unable to reach them in time. The shift lead’s keyring always had one to unlock them in case of an emergency, but Conrad remembered from his own years dealing with shelters that sometimes you just needed a small room that no one else could get into.
And sometimes you really did just need a private place to do your drugs.
It’d been 15 weeks since the last time he’d dug the case out of his pack. It was kept at the bottom. It was plain smooth metal except for the complicated combination lock that kept it closed. The dials required a delicate touch to manipulate. If his fingers were shaking or his mind muddled or his vision blurred, he’d be unable to open it. Or so he hoped; it’d never actually been tested before. It was his hope it never would be.
Inside, there was a single glass injection needle, a few vials of liquid that were only labeled with colored stripes, a couple of pills in bags, and a few small bags of mostly white powders with various markings of their own.
Con slowly brushed his fingers across the contents as he considered them carefully. Matches wasn’t going to allow Zachery to fight up front no matter how much the kid wanted to. Matches might himself, but the man’s mood had been growing increasingly mercurial throughout the night and Conrad wasn’t going to assume he’d have the man’s backup when planning.
There were over two dozen Skullz waiting across the street. They were armed with knives, clubs, and firearms. There was no way to get across the street via the rooftops, so he’d have to approach them from the front. He’d have to get across the width of the street before he could even engage them in combat.
He was going to get shot.
It didn’t matter how lucky he was or how badly they aimed, he was going to catch at least a couple bullets. And he needed to be able to fight after.
The bag of off-white powder with the three black lines at an angle on the label it was, then.
Conrad took it out of the case, closed up the rest, returned it to his pack, and pored the bag of powder he’d removed out on the counter. With a knife blade, he started shepherding it into a single thin line.
The shit didn’t have a real name. Duncan had a different one for it every time he tweaked the ingredients and none of them were good. Con was still stupidly fond of the idiot, and he may be a genius with pharmaceuticals, but the man could not come up with a drug name that didn’t sound like it’d come from an 80s cartoon to save his life. The last one before they’d broken up had been “Awesome-X”. Mentally, Con just called it ‘kickass in a bag’.
Duncan swore by the shit. “It’s mostly cocaine”, he’d explained, “Some amphetamines to ramp it up, and a few pinches of some other things to keep you focused, stop your thoughts from going all sideways, and keep all that aggression on your original target and not everyone in your general vicinity.” Black Mask had developed it for his own men to use when open street warfare broke out, or so Duncan claimed. Conrad had been pretty sure it was all bullshit cooked up by Marcos to help move his pet alchemist’s new creation, but he didn’t use it for the story.
Conrad wasn’t an idiot, mind. After joining up with Hood’s gang, one of the first things he’d done was to sit own with one of Slice’s direct underlings to go over the ingredients and confirm with someone he trusted as competent that Marcos hadn’t just been encouraging Duncan to cook up a particularly expensive poison. Bezoar’s lips had thinned and twisted as he read through it all before very grudgingly admitting that if used sparingly (very sparingly) in limited (very limited) amounts, there shouldn’t be any long-term effects. “Or at least, nothing either of us will be living long enough to see.”
A frightfully intelligent man, Bezoar, but he’d been born with the soul of a sixty year old undertaker and couldn’t be shown a rainbow without working in a reminder that everyone present was going to die someday.
Conrad glanced at the time on his phone. Enough stalling. He hated how this shit set his sinuses on fire. Fifty kids, Conrad. Every edge you can get.
-------
It was 12:00 AM, and somewhere in the back of the crowd of Skullz, something had just caught on fire. Conrad bared his teeth. Fucking finally.
Notes:
Bruce would just like Conrad to stop giving him emotional whiplash every five minutes.
Duke wonders if it'd be too much of a blow to his cover to make the lasers turn into the Batsignal when he uses them.
Conrad has gone a whole 30,000+ words without punching anyone and deserves to get rewarded by being allowed to punch someone.
Angela is barricaded in the bunk rooms with the younger kids narrating her last will and testament to Siri.
Coming up Next: Balefire hits the scene, everyone gets punched, a lot of bullets get fired, and Conrad proves once and for all he has what it takes to be a bat-in-law ('it' being really stupid decision making).
Chapter Specific Content Warnings for:
*Yeah, queer kids are getting beaten into comas and curbstomped to death and the authorities do not give a shit.
*Not being able to hit back because your attacker is richer than you which makes your attempts at self defense just rude.
*Bombs planted under homeless shelters
*Fascist mobs
*Talking about shooting Robin in the face
*Talking about tying Robin up above a shark tank
*Death traps
*Everyone but Bruce agreeing that the only good fascist is a dead one
*Conrad assuming he's a psychopath but without the language to properly describe it
*Arming teenagers and preteens with lethal weapons to defend themselves with
*The main character taking illegal drugs to gain an edge in combat and treating it as just something you do.
*Background scattering of sexwork, underaged sexwork, getting injured while doing underaged sex work, daily violence and a resigned cultural acceptance of the same
Chapter 6: Conrad Doesn't Got This
Summary:
“Right.” Con said levelly, “Fuck everything about this guy. I’m gonna go kill him, now.”
It's the show down to throw down. It's a mob boss, a not-a-hench, an a half-dozen kids armed with guns and laser pointers against impossible odds and pyromancers. Great Oracle above preserve us.
Notes:
Here's the chapter where we earn that Canon Typical Violence tag. Blood's getting spilt, bones are getting snapped, holes are getting put in people in places where holes should never be put. We're also going to be hearing from some deeply unpleasant people who use deeply unpleasant language. Slurs will abound.
It's my first time ever writing extended combat, and you would not believe how much side digressions and rambling got cut during rewrites. I might have to do an entire side one-shot about the folklore of Gotham's street kids alone.
Other Chapter-Specific CWs in the End Notes as always.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
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r/AskReddit · Posted by u/ethnicsingamesjournalism 2 years ago.
Reoccurring Dreams?
Personal
No greater purpose to this question, just want weird shit to read.
Multiple times in my life, I’ve had dreams about one of those weird armored anteater things (EDIT: Aardvarks!) trying to give me life advice, but it’s all life advice that assumes I’m a rich white woman which I’m absolutely not on all fronts.
Tell me what reoccurring dreams you have?
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u/RaddicalCon · 2 years ago
I don’t really remember my dreams most of the time. I’d say I hardly dream at all, but I know that’s bullshit. Everyone dreams - every night - so I must as well. I just don’t remember them. Honestly, that’s probably for the best, given the sorts of shit I’d probably dream about. But out of the few dreams I do remember, there’s one that’s shown up semi-regularly for just about all my life.
I kept a dream journal for awhile, for a lot of reasons that aren’t important anymore, which is how I realized I’d been having this one repeatedly. The details of it never stick in my head for long, but I -do- remember what I wrote in the journal. I don’t have it anymore, lost it along with everything else in the shelter fire last year, but I can remember what it said so that’s what I’m basing this on.
It’s cold. It’s always cold in this dream. It starts off just lightly nippy, which is to be expected, because I’m outside at night. I’m laying out on the rooftop of this building I could always see from outside my bedroom window as a kid, and I’m looking up at the stars. I live in the middle of one of the America’s largest metro complexes, so seeing more than a few stars at a time is a once-in-a-year phenomenon, but in my dream, it’s like what the night sky would be if you were in the middle of the ocean with all the lights turned off. Just, -everything-. It’s beautiful. Just thinking about them makes me feel something that’s almost but not quite homesickness. It’s hard to explain.
It’s not just me up there, there are others. Two, maybe even three dozen. We’re all just lying out ever how in perfect comfortable silence watching the stars as they slowly turn and shift. And, shifting in ways I’m pretty sure the actual stars don’t. Not in a single night, certainly. It’s like those CGI simulations of how the Big Dipper will look in 500,000 years or something? Like, as the galaxy turns, we slowly get a different angle on everything so the positions shift out of sync depending on distance? Something like that. But over the span of hours, instead.
The people are important. Who they are. I can’t remember how. Even when I was writing these down fresh from waking up from the dream, I could never remember exactly how.
At some point in the dream, it gets colder. Snow stars accumulating. It never falls from the sky, the snow drifts just sort of grow up around me.
A new individual enters the dream. They walk up behind me and take a seat on the giant HVAC unit I’m laying out under. We have a conversation. Again, even after freshly waking I can never remember exactly what. About the stars, at least partially, but mostly about other things. Something I’m supposed to remember but don’t.
Then the cold spikes and the wind picks up and everything dissolves under a full blizzard of snow, ice, and wind. And I wake up.
Always have a few moments of feeling like I’m about to have everything fall off from frostbite before I shake myself fully awake out of one of those.
I kept that dream journal for about two years before the fire, and I must’ve had it written down at least six times, maybe more. Like I said, dreams don’t really stick around in my memory for long, not even that one.
I’m sure it all speaks to some sort of horrific repressed childhood trauma, but for once I’m at a loss for what it could be.
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00ooOoo00
Conrad’s first reaction was to leap off the building and charge in before the White Skullz had a chance to warm themselves up. Only Matches Malone’s heavy grip on his shoulder kept him in place as the street below lit up with sickly greens mixed with fiery oranges. When the figure holding the fire in its hand stepped forward, he tensed again, and Match’s fingers gripped hard enough to leave bruises.
“Not. Yet.” was all Malone said when Con growled. He then flinched as one of the older kids flicked off the safety on the rifle she’d been given and crouched into an untrained but not unpracticed snipers position behind the parapet. There was a succession of other clicks along the roof as the rest of the other half-dozen kids who’d followed them up took that as their cue to switch off safeties and get into position as well.
Con’s felt a touch with hometown pride at how easily and assuredly the kids moved into place. Malone had been near sick watching the firearms get handed out to the shelter’s residents, but just a glance should prove to the mob boss they knew what they were doing. Con glanced up at Match’s face. He did not look comforted by the ease with which the kids were defending themselves. If anything he looked even worse.
There was nearly a decade of time between the self-deprecating mess his dad invited over in attempts to get at least one proper meal into him a week and the near head of Gotham’s underworld that stood behind him now. There was something in that time gap that Conrad was missing. Something to explain the change. He’d felt it for years, hearing the increasingly insane stories being passed around about Matches and his ever-growing family of barely controlled chaotics. The last two hours in the man’s unsettling close presence was only confirming it.
The part of his brain he’d been trained throughout childhood to keep on lockdown (and that Red Hood had spent the last three weeks pushing him to never turn off) was spinning and grinding away in the depths. Conrad wasn’t looking forward to whatever it was going to spit out when it was done; but every time he instinctually went to shut it down, he remembered the Boss’ words, ground his teeth, and left it alone. Matches Malone wasn’t even his boss, let alone his Boss. It wasn’t up to Con to keep the man’s secrets even from himself.
His thoughts spun through his brain like electricity through Uncle Otto’s deathtraps. Meditations on the nature of the crime lord squeezing his shoulder hard enough to stir unpleasant memories from his teenage years ran in parallel to the horrid fascination with which he watched the flames on the street below.
The figure was slowly making its way through the crowd of Skullz who were slowly parting to make way. Its right hand was held up, flames erupting two feet up from the palm. It wasn’t proper fire. The orange flames were mixed with sickly shades of green. Not like the fires you sometimes got when the Joker was on a rampage or one of the chemical plants went up in the middle of the night. It wasn’t a portion of the flame becoming green because of what it was burning. It was a fire that glowed with all the normal colors of flame while also being very much a specific sickly pale shade of green that spoke of abandoned hospitals, decaying rot, and the slime that grew in wet dark corners where something had once died.
It was an unsettling specific shade, made all the worse by the fact Con had no idea where the description he’d given it had come from. It was like his mind was trying to interpret a color his eyes shouldn’t be able to see and his brain didn’t have the ability to process. A color that knew itself and wanted to be known.
Conrad was 95% positive none of that was the drugs talking. Kickass in a bag didn’t make your thoughts do things like that, no matter what tweaks Duncan made to the formula between batches.
The flames didn’t move right either. It was like ink in water, or seaweed getting pushed by the tide, or snakes searching the air for something they didn’t understand. Disquieting movements, purposeful, like they were taking in the world around them and didn’t like what they saw.
Conrad didn’t want to think about the flames anymore. Please.
“The fuck is wrong with this guy?” Zachery hissed between his teeth as he leaned forward over the parapet. “Fucking hell?”
“What?” Zach jumped at Con’s question, like he’d forgotten anyone else was there. “What’s wrong with him?”
“What’s what?”
“Wrong with him? You said something was wrong with…” Con waved his hand at the figure. It was almost at the front of the crowd, but he still couldn’t make out anything about them other than the flames writhing above its hand. “That.”
“Just, the, um…” Zach’s eyes darted between Con and Matches. With a final warning squeeze, Malone released his shoulder and stepped around. Leaning in, he and Zachery began a whispered conversation that Con couldn’t make out over the sounds of the winds and breathing and scruffs of shoes against rooftop grit. Normally. When his every sense wasn’t at its peak and singing in his veins.
“None of the light around him is behaving right. You can see it too, right?” Zach whispered to his uncle who just gave a vaguely affirmative grunt in response. “All his light’s getting warped around whatever it is he’s got in his left hand.”
Matches made another grunt of a different tenor than the first, “His right hand.”
“No, he’s got the fire in the right hand,” Zach hissed, voice a little louder, “but there’s something else in his left! It doesn’t look right. I can’t explain how, but you have to believe me-“
“I do. I do believe you, sonny.” The same oversized scarred fingers that’d been bruising his shoulder just moments earlier gave the kid a comforting squeeze of support. Con snorted softly under his breath, refocusing from the supposedly private conversation to the activity on the street below.
The figure with its unnatural flame was stepping up to the curb of the street as the final two Skullz stepped out of its way. It was tall, dressed in a long coat, maybe a cloak. Its face flashed like metal. It… There were colors there, or maybe it was just the reflected light of the flame. It… wasn’t in shadow. Between the fire and the emergency lighting blazing from the Center, the street was starkly illuminated like mid-day under a glaring red sun. But Con couldn’t make out a single detail.
The left Skullz who’d stepped aside was easy to see. A broad teenager with close-cropped dark hair. His white skull paint couldn’t hide the deep scar that started on his upper left brow then angled down, taking a chunk out of his nose, before ending on his lower right cheek. His eyes were a greyish brown. The nondescript full-sleeved black shirt he wore had tears around the left wrist. Con was pretty sure his name was Nicola, if he’d connected shouted comments between Skullz in previous fights to the right person.
The Skullz to the figure’s right was one of the Bowery Boys. Duncan, Donahue, some name that started with a D and a vowel, at least. Light brown hair done up in curls that Con was pretty sure didn’t come naturally. His skull paint was sharp and precise as always. The only flaw to his otherwise fashion model face was his twisted bent nose which Con couldn’t help but feel a twist of pride about whenever he saw it.
The figure itself… Wore a jacket. Maybe a cloak. Its face reflected metallic. It was also stepping forward, now in front of the mob and turned to face them. Its outstretched hand clenched into a raised fist and the fire around it flared higher. “Brothers! We stand here tonight at the hour between the old day and the next! We stand here at the crux between the old world and the next!”
It was like the breaking of a summer storm. The night air suddenly filled with the hollers and catcalls and threats of pain-filled deaths that normally followed the Skullz. Nailed bats and boards, rifles and makeshift bladed weapons were heft into the air, faces that had been illuminated red seconds earlier now covered with light that shifted orange and green from one moment to the next.
“Oracle, sweet mother of panopticon,” Zach whispered next to him, “if you can see me or hear me, send me a Bat. I do not care who.” Conrad pretended he didn’t hear, though he’d half expected the boy to finish with the quick ‘X’ drawn over the face that most people he knew who offered prayers to Gotham’s mythical ghost-in-the-machine ended their petitions with.
Something rarely acknowledged by those outside the makeshift world of street kids and runaways is this: There is no mysticism in the world that compares to what the homeless youth of any city create for themselves. Gotham was no different.
There were the prayers to The Oracle, offered up to security cameras before you tried to shoplift baby formula, food, or a pair of shoes that weren’t falling apart. (Never for something you didn’t need, The Oracle would ensure you were caught if you called upon Them from a place of greed.) If you were trying to duck a police dragnet, pass a background check for a job, or just needed to hide from ever-present cameras, you found a microphone connected to the internet and whispered secrets into it in exchange for The Oracle’s blessing and protection. And if the Rogues were attacking, your stepfather had gone for his gun, or the abandoned warehouse you were sheltering in had caught fire with all the exits blocked, you prayed for the Oracle to send a Bat. Any Bat. It didn’t always work, but it worked often enough for the stories to spread.
Closer to home, behind Crime Alley’s sole library branch, two of the district’s mismatched streets collided at odd angles and left a hollow between misaligned buildings. Over the years since his death, it had become a makeshift shrine to the Second Robin. It was just a small urban cave covered with pictures, draped with a torn yellow and green cape and lit by constantly burning candles, all maintained by a constant rotation of fiercely protective child gangs. The floor was always covered with a thick layer of hardened wax embedded with pennies, shiny pebbles, and whatever other minor offerings homeless kids could scavenge up as offerings.
For years, Conrad had uttered prayers of his own before a big show down. And in the aftermath, he’d pay pilgrimage to spend a few hours chipping off excess wax, carefully cleaning smoke off the laminated pictures, and otherwise show appreciation for his continued survival.
It hit very differently now that Con was fucking him on the regular.
Still, he found the bulge of the emergency beacon in the hem of his jacket and clicked it three more times while whispering his traditional “Oh best of all Robins, grant me the kickassitude I need to pull through this bullshit without anyone dying who didn’t have it coming.” prayer. If he pulled through, he’d make the Boss go cross-eyed, then head down to his shrine and scrub the walls till the original stone colors could be seen beneath the layers of soot.
The echoes of the figure’s words were still fading as it turned back to face the Center. “Too long we have suffered to live in a world filled with degeneracy and filth! Too long we’ve been forced to endure the existence of those who’d see everything we live and strive for sink beneath a foul sea of perversion! No longer! With clensing flame and purifying light, we shall see our beloved city will be made clean!”
And as the mob behind him roared its cheers, the light reflecting off the figure flickered, and from one breath and the next, they snapped into focus.
Conrad would’ve been perfectly happy if they’d left themselves obscured.
There was a small but vital subculture in Gotham dedicated entirely to bespoke costumery for the city’s vast array of rogues, gangs, hench, and even vigilantes. From the unknown tailor who kept the Joker in pinstripe suits of whatever color combination his mercurial moods demanded that month, to the mousy little woman with grey hair and giant glasses who ensured Mr. Dent’s worst-half never had to go out wearing the same eye-searing suit twice while his better half was always kept in the sharp charcoal greys and blacks that’d won him DA, to his own second cousin who had a loft filled with variations of each major Rogue’s outfits for when they were of a mood for something new, along with piles of ideas and examples to present to any up and comer hunting for a style of their own.
The individual now proudly displayed at the front of the White Skullz mob had not made use of any of them.
It wasn’t just the fact the “cloak” looked like it had been cut from a swath of cloth meant to be made into curtains, at once too thin to be a proper cape but also hanging too heavy to be anything but a solid weight off the man’s shoulders. It wasn’t just the boots and gloves that had obviously been repurposed from an old henching outfit and spraypainted with colors to approximately match the rest. It wasn’t even just the giant gold and orange metallic mask that looked like it was trying to mimic a laughing drama mask in frozen flames. It was all of that, combined with a straight up tie-dyed t-shirt in oranges and greens that looked like it was still wet, and jeans covered with patches of colored cloth crudely sewn on in what it took Con a few moments to realize were supposed to be flame decals.
“Right.” Con said levelly, “Fuck everything about this guy. I’m gonna go kill him, now.”
Matches shouted something and grabbed for him, but Conrad had already leapt off the edge of the roof and was diving towards the street. He’d made sure to aim himself at the nearest streetlamp; he wasn’t completely insane.
It was so much easier without an unbalanced back strapped to his back. He caught the streetlight’s outstretched arm single-handed, let his momentum bleed off with three full loops around the pole before releasing just before the final arc and flipped forward to land on the edge of the sidewalk, never dropping his bat in the other hand the entire time.
He straightened up from his crouched landing with wild eyes and a sharp grin, taking in the dozens facing him. “Sup, boys?” he called across the street, “It’s me, ya demon! Who’s first up to get their femurs shattered tonight?”
He actually got some flinches from the Skullz around the fringes, which was awesome. He also got at least a dozen weapons leveled at him and safeties clicking off which was much less so.
And the fucker in the DIY evil sorcerer getup just tilted his head back and laughed. Cackled, really. “The self-proclaimed protector of faggots everywhere! What an honor!” The man swept his arm out with a gesture that would’ve flared his cloak dramatically behind him if it had been made of vaguely reasonable material. “Tell me, Basher,” and fucking Jesus, what was with people trying to give him extra names? And why were they always so bad? “do you know why we call your kind Faggots?”
Conrad didn’t bother to hide his sigh. Every last one of these assholes always thought they were so fucking original. He was distracted from a full on response by a sudden flash of headlines turning down the street. A late-night driver was braving the streets of Crime Alley, and was not deterred by the hellish light show ahead of them.
“Back in the homelands, faggots refer to bundles of sticks, bound bunches of branches and twigs!” the garishly costumed asshole continued, ignoring the car approaching, even as it revved its engine to give it a punch of speed to get past whatever the fuck was happening. Most of the Skullz had turned to watch it, hands gripping tighter on weapons, almost vibrating with anticipation. “The shit you use as fire starters. And there’s no better way to set the night alight than setting a bunch of faggots on fire!”
The car was screeching down the road, gunning up to 60 by the time it reached the crowd. The robed man threw the fire in his right hand just as it passed, Conrad barely having time to process it appeared to be a burning brick before it smashed the windshield and the car screeched off to the side, swung back in the other direction as it skidded on the rain-slick street, tipped, and rolled to a crashing stop with it’s front crunched into a streetlight. The greenorange flames exploded on contact, and fire was roaring out of the smashed window.
The driver kicked their way free of a smoldering airbag and dropped to the street. With true Gotham survival instincts, they didn’t even pause long enough for a startled “What the FUCK!” or demands for an explanation. They just vaulted over the back end of the car and went off racing down the street the direction they’d come from. The pyromancer just cackled again, a manic edge working into the laughter.
Conrad watched the roof of the car sagging, the glass of the windshield running like hot wax, and the fire spreading across metal like it was tissue paper. It spread as unnaturally as it looked. He turned his eyes to the robed figure as it pointed a dramatic finger forward. “Witness your own fate and the fate of all those who pervert the natural order! You will be purified by flame, so sayeth BALEFIRE!”
There was shouting he could hear from the Lucas Trent Center’s rooftop, though he couldn’t make out the words over the roar coming from the mob of Skullz. Even if the Boss hadn’t been so insistent about him using it, a part of him thought frantically, he’d have punched the panic button by now. The sickly green and orange flames spread down the half smashed in car then spread across the street below like it’d been soaked in kerosene.
“Your degeneracy will be tolerated no longer!” The asshole – ‘Balefire’ (for fuck’s sake) – shouted as he took what Con figured was supposed to be a dramatic pose. As dramatically serious as everything else about him. “We will burn your infection out of our city! Every last one of you will be purged until there is nothing left but clean sterile ASH!”
It wasn’t fucking fair, Con thought, someone so ineptly stupid shouldn’t be capable of actual damage, much less be capable of setting fucking concrete on fire. It took all the fun out of roasting their costume design.
Balefire’s hand once again burst into writhing green and orange flames that flowed more like oil underwater than fire as they twisted about each other. He grabbed a stray battered hubcap from the gutter, cackling with triumph as it exploded like tinder paper into flame.
Their throwing arm may have been weak, but there was no strength or skill needed to simply throw the hubcap like an infernal discus across the street to crash against the side of the Center. The impact smashed it into flaming shrapnel that set the cold stonework alight like so much dry wood wherever they landed.
Conrad shifted with a snarl, memories of flames spilling through hallways and bunkrooms flashing through his mind. In response, the two dozen plus Skullz across the street shifted as well, guns releveling to aim straight at him.
And just fuck -everything- about this night. Conrad gripped the hem of his jacket and slammed the emergency beacon as fast as his finger would move in the faint hope the communications blackout could be overloaded.
It also gave him an opportunity to fish two of the smoke pellets from his jacket pocket. Eyes narrowed as he considered. The self-proclaimed Balefire was the biggest danger. Everyone was armed, there were too many guns, but they’d clustered themselves too close to fire amongst themselves without, the least confident had put themselves in the ba-
“YO! FUCKERS!” That was Zachery. Con resisted the urge to look up along with the rest of the mob at the sudden rooftop shout. A second later, the sky above them exploded into light. The laser pointers, he realized with a start. Trails of light spiralled around each other in dazzling patterns. How the hell the kid was managing that he couldn’t begin to guess. Prisms, or he’d detached the pointers, or both, or- It didn’t matter. The Skullz were as distracted as he’d been, and less quick to recover.
He flung the two smoke pellets and then Conrad was racing forward before his thought had even finished.
There were shouts from the mob. Some, at least, had noticed him starting to move. On his next step, Con jinked left and was peppered with bits of asphalt as bullets that would’ve taken him out at the knees peppered across the street instead. He moved left again, then right as sharp as he could, cold lead whistling past his head. He’d been fighting them too much; they’d had time to get halfway decent. The smoke pellets struck against asphalt and bodies within a second of each other and the sidewalk vanished under billowing black clouds. They lost their ability to aim.
If the next bullet had hit where the shooter had meant it to, it might not have hit where Conrad wound up being.
He spun slightly at the force of impact, but it otherwise felt no more painful than a punch. That was the kickass in a bag. Future Con was going to have a bunch of shit to deal with. But the Present Skullz had a much bigger problem on their hands. Con had made it across the street. Unless they wanted to start shooting each other, their guns were useless. He had both hands around his bat and a target rich environment. He laughed with delight as he crossed the final steps with a leap and dove in.
00ooOoo00
His bat swung, the weighted head increasing its speed and force as it slammed into the first Skullz’ gut. A burly fucker a few inches shorter than Con; the others had called him Kurt during previous run-ins. The guy had enough sense to try and jump out of the way, but he was slower than Con’s swing and instead of getting it right into the gut, he caught it along the side. Con felt something crack through the length of the bat, ribs catching the brunt of the force. The thug went down on his ass and rolled over with a groan. Conrad was already spinning, elbow out to catch a rush of air and motion he’d felt behind him. The smoke was dissipating already, but enough was left to get caught up in twisting contrails behind the lunging figure.
He didn’t know this one. Their facepaint was plastered on, obscuring any identifying features better than most face masks he’d seen in his life. He’d been rushing forward, knife prepared to slash across Con’s unguarded back, but a quick motion later he was writhing on the concrete with an elbow-crushed windpipe. He’d probably be okay. No permanent damage, at least. Nothing that would make him suffocate. Or maybe it would. Not Conrad’s fucking concern. The knife that skittered away across the roadway had nasty serrated edges glinting in the light and Con had seen enough bodies opened up by similar blades recently. There was no reason to add his to the list.
A rush of heat was his only warning, there wasn’t even an audible whoosh of flames, but Con still managed to throw himself forward into a roll, feeling the hairs along the back of his neck sizzle as another piece of burning rubbish flew centimeters from his skin before splashing across the concrete. Flames spread outwards in ripples from the impact site; the entire neighborhood was going to be alight in just a few minutes at this rate. Conrad ignored how the street seemed to bubble and flow wherever the fire spread.
He came up from his roll just in time to catch a chain across the face, head snapping backwards from the impact. Pretty sure he lost part of a tooth. It was one of the fucking Bristol boys no less. He was never going to live this down. His lower jaw felt odd as the wind moved across it. Hopefully just scraped and raw. Hopefully not torn open from the impact. Until his veins stopped singing, the only way he could tell would be to stop and feel, and fuck stopping for anything less than death at this point.
It was Kenneth, fucking golden boy of Gotham Academy. Did wrestling or football or something that gave him access the very finest growth hormones his coach could buy. He’d never struck Conrad as a leader, but he’d seen that smirking face and coifed blond forehead curl laughing and running from more broken still bodies than any of the others. He was good at running. Con was pretty sure he’d never been face to face with the fucker before. He certainly had none of the wariness the Skullz he’d faced off against multiple times tended to have.
“The faggot whore himself. I can’t believe I get to be the one to put you in the ground where you belong.” The fucker laughed before he lunged forward, white facepaint cracking around his eyes from the wild grin that accompanied his words. The heavy chain whipped back around as he pulled and Con barely had time to pull himself out of the way before it whipsawed past.
He thrust up his bat to catch it, letting heavy links wrap around with a metallic clattering before pulling as hard as he could. “Bigger piles of shit than you have tried.” Con growled. He would’ve added specific examples, but that fucking chain was heavier than it looked. Lead in the alloy or fucking something, and he had to grab his bat with one hand on both ends to keep it from getting pulled out of his grip.
The Skullz leered, his end of the chain wrapped around his arms as he grabbed it with both hands and yanked as hard as he could. “Big fucking mouth on you, faggot.” Conrad let himself get pulled forward, the Skullz’ grin broaded to near Joker proportions, “Gonna knock out every tooth from that big fucking mouth and shove em down your throat with your own bat!”
Con released said bat just as the richboy gave a final pull, letting it and the chain snap back and club the would-be punk in the face with his released weapon. At the same time, he dropped into a roll, letting his momentum carry him forward. Hands fumbled getting his one knife free and instead of slicing through the meat of the fucker’s tendons as he rolled past, he instead just scraped it along the sides, tearing jeans and biting an inch or two deep into the muscle of the fucker’s calf. Not half of what he’d meant to do, but it still made the boy scream in a way that more than made it worth it.
Kenneth fell to one knee, clutching his battered face as blood seeped from his jeans leg. “I am going to shove that ENTIRE bat up your fucking shitsmearing Faggot ASS!” He screamed at the same moment Conrad rolled to the side and grabbed his bat as it came free from the chains. He couldn’t push the advantage, though. The smoke had cleared, and the Skullz were moving in. Boots slammed down and knives slashed, reflecting red and green and orange glare as they sought him out. He had no choice but to keep rolling back into the middle of the street where the mob thinned and was kept at bay by occasional bullets and blinding laser lights from above. God bless those fucking kids.
Con ran into someone’s legs and he spun, bat in one hand and knife slashing out with the other before his brain processed the finely pressed slacks and dress shoes in front of him. There was no time to stop the swing of his knife and he had to let it go mid-swing, letting it clatter away across the concrete. His empty hand whistled past Matches Malone’s leg harmlessly. The man barely seemed to notice as he leaned his entire bulk and muscle into a single brutal punch straight into one of the Skullz’s face.
The rival punk went down with blood across his face, bounced off the concrete, and didn’t move further. Malone was already moving, tan trenchcoat whirling around him like dervish robes as a polished dress shoes lashed out and caught another punk in the throat. He then grabbed for a third, caught him, and turned to the main crowd. The man’s palm-tree and parrot shirt road up on his belly, showing off a core somehow even more solidly muscular than Conrad had already thought before he grunted and threw the third Skullz into the mob, sending down half a dozen.
The White Skullz Matches kicked in the throat had pulled himself up enough to pull out his gun and aim it at the mob boss’ back. Con didn’t even think, just swung his bat. It should’ve been aimed at his head. With that force, at that angle, he could’ve crushed in the man’s skull, collapsed the bone, pierced the fucker’s waste of a brain with shattered pieces of cranium, leaving the waste of meat to twitch out its final moments.
“It’s just an agreement between me and them, Radd. It’s not like you’re a cosignatory or anything, I just want you to understand why I’ve been doing what I’m doing. I don’t kill as many people and in exchange I can do things like have breakfast with my grandpa without the big bad Bats loosing his shit. But they’re not going to judge me for what you do.”
“You’re better than this, kiddo.”
Oh fuck you, Matches, you parsimonious ass. This isn’t for you.
The bat hit the Skullz in the arm. There was bone showing through the skin and there was screaming, but the punk was still breathing. The gun fell uselessly on the ground and that was the important part. Matches whirled in a moment, turning his un-bullet-ridden back away as his eyes took in Con with his bat, the Skullz with his shattered arm, and the gun still spinning away on the street. There was the barest suggestion of a nod, then Malone was lunging forward into the mob fists first, trechcoat glowing red in the light as it flared behind him.
Despite Matches’ efforts there were still too many Skullz. The multiple fires were adding a nauseating mix of greens that were/weren’t oranges to the red glow that filled the night street. The edges of his vision swam for a moment before snapping back into focus. He was going to crash before too much longer. He was at best only halfway through his up-time on this shit. He could keep fighting through a crash, but not against so many. Not with all these fires melting everything they touched.
The air above him exploded in a maze of laser-lights, reds and greens and blues all going at different angles. There was a sharp crack near his ear and he spun just in time to catch a Skullz stumbling backwards, scrubbing at his eyes, gun still in one hand and laser lights playing across his face.
He didn’t know if Zach could see him from the rooftop, but he flashed a thumbs up just in case. He had to figure out what kind of prism the kid was using; Calib would go wild with the possibilities. Con would have to find someplace he could let the little gremlin experiment to his heart’s content without blinding anyone who hadn’t earned it.
He caught someone’s knife arm with his bat, grinning sharply at the satisfying crack from beneath the punk’s muscle and the strangled cry he gave as the knife dropped from a suddenly limp hand. Fuck, he loved this. It never made it into any of his explanations about morality, but the strongest evidence he had for being an asshole at heart was just how much fucking fun shit like this was. Thank god Crime Alley had so many worthy targets for him to vent on, he didn’t know what he’d do otherwise.
The fucker on the ground was still trying to reach for his knife with his unmangled hand. Conrad brought the heel of his boot down on the Skullz’ wrist, letting it crunch underfoot but otherwise ignored as he charged forward. He could see the whirling colors of Balefire’s cape from between figures in the mob, and he made a beeline for it.
The goddamn fucking chain lashed through the air again, forcing him to dive low, then roll into a leap to avoid it as it snapped backwards. Kenneth wasn’t looking too hot, blood across his face and he braced with his left leg only as he used the chain’s motion to wrap it back around his arms. His teeth were barred, snarling as he shifted and leapt for Con, chain gripped between his fists like the world’s thickest garrot wire.
“I am going to break your fucking legs!” he shouted as Con dove to the side. “I am going to snap your fucking spine so all you can do is just lay there like the useless fucking trash you are!” Those fucking jeans he’d sliced open hadn’t been that nice some distant part of his mind snarked to itself. Conrad ignored it, spinning around to keep the man in his sight without opening himself up to the others moving in.
“I’m going to make you fucking lie there and watch as I drag every last degenerate out of that building and shoot them in the fucking head!” Boy had a death wish; it was the only explanation. God, if he was in this fight as Conrad and not as Underboss of the Red Hood, that fucker would already have as many bullets in his skull as it took to make him stop moving. Whatever sorry excuse for a God he believed in, he should be praying his thanks. Kenneth shifted his weight, letting the chain unspool from one arm as he wound up to lash it back out. His right leg was forward, his weight back on the left. Lunging forward at the end was going to hurt like hell.
“I’m going to tell each one exactly why they’ve got to die: Because one stupid faggot didn’t know his FUCKING pla-” Con had begun his swing before he dropped to his knee, both hands on the bat as he continued the motion upwards to meet the Bristol boy’s forward lunge. It hit true, striking up between his legs with a crack of wood against pelvic bone, the muscle and meat between the two crushed in between. The rest of what the golden boy was going to say was lost in a ragged high-pitched scream on the edge of hearing that lasted until the final scrap of air left Kenneth’s lungs and he collapsed. If Conrad caught the edge of the fucker’s head with his boot as he raced past, well. It was a crowded battlefield at midnight, it could’ve been anyone’s boot.
He caught another knife before he reached Balefire. It hadn’t even been aimed at him; he’d gotten too close to the maelstrom that was Matches Malone. Most of Zachery’s laser fire was aimed at his uncle’s immediate attackers (and how the kid managed to not hit Matches with any of his rapid-fire flashes of cornea-searing light was beyond him. The split-second control he must have…), and one of the attackers had lashed out wildly as he stumbled backwards, blinded and enraged. It’d sliced upwards on Conrad’s bare arm before catching the bullet hole that’d been punched into his right shoulder.
Which was the first he remembered he’d gotten shot there since it’d happened. He was going to be getting so much shit for swinging his bat around full force with who knows what sort of shoulder damage. Sorry, Future Con. Hopefully he’d understand.
It’d cost him his balance though, and the stumble cost him even more seconds. By the time he’d reached Balefire, the masked man had yanked a piece of wood from one of the building’s boarded up windows and was letting orange and green flames wick and race down its length. With the mob shifting to follow Matches, there was no one between him and the Center, and he was looking ready to just race it over bodily to slam it against the side of the building.
Con dropped his bat and just tackled the fucker instead.
Balefire slammed face first down on his own burning board, but the bastard was unaffected by the flames. Because of fucking course he wasn’t. Why would it have been that easy? At least he’d dropped it as he flailed and rolled onto his back to snarl the expected “Who DARES?!” up in Conrad’s face. Conrad answered him with a slam of his forehead down. It wasn’t until the impact that he realized he should’ve taken a different approach with someone wearing a mostly metal mask. Fuck it. He’ll just have even more fun forehead scar stories to tell in the future.
It fucking hurt, though. He’d definitely sliced up his own forehead with that move, but he’d also bounced the self-proclaimed magus’ head off the pavement and he’d stopped cackling and proclamating for a brief merciful moment.
That’s when Con saw it. Balefire had been gripping it tight in his left hand, out of sight. But as his fingers fell slack, they uncurled just enough to reveal it.
It was a candle. Which made no sense. A lit candle. Which made even less. A gnarled stub of a candle, barely a few inches long and almost as thick, looking like a solid mass of old wax drippings with a wick shoved into the middle. Conrad would’ve figured it was just another case of insane weirdos committing to their shtick except the candle was lit, and was burning with a sickly orangish green flame.
“All his light’s getting warped around whatever it is he’s got in his left hand.”
Conrad grabbed for it before his brain even finished processing the details. He would’ve grabbed for it even if he had taken a moment to think. Balefire was already trying to kick him off and roll away when Con’s fingers wrapped around it; another split-second and he wouldn’t have been able to even touch it. He wasn’t being an idiot. There had been no way to predict what happened.
The footage was caught by half-a-dozen security cameras, giving Conrad plenty of angles to view events by after the fact. In them, you could tell the exact moment his fingers made contact with the melted, green-flamed candle. Even though the two of them were hidden by the crowded bodies of the mob, Matches’ one man army of gut-punches and body slams, and Zachery’s laser lights, the cameras all still caught the giant geyser of flame that roared up and over the crowd, flattening as it hit the overhangs and curved arches of the building front and roiled for several seconds before winking back out, leaving the entire front of the abandoned complex opposite the Center and the surrounding street and sidewalks burning with unnatural light.
Some of the closer cameras with audio even picked up screaming. Conrad could recognize it as his own, though he didn’t remember doing it.
Conrad’s arm was on fire. Not metaphorical, ‘it feels like burning’ fire either, but literal fire. Green and orange flames writhed like semi-solid serpents and the smell of cooking meat mixed with the piss and filth of the gutters and the stink that only several dozen unwashed thugs exerting themselves in bloodshed could create. He was aware it must hurt. The sensations felt off in the same way getting his funny bone hit felt off. Something that should be nothing but agony but instead just throbbed and twitched as nerve endings tried to send signals the brain was too soaked in chemicals to accept.
Future Con was going to be so pissed with him.
Balefire wasn’t giving it up without a fight, either. Conrad had his fist gripped tight around the candle, but the punk had his wrapped tight around Conrad’s and was slamming his head against Con’s arm like he’d forgotten he was wearing a mask and was trying to bite it. He had a wild manic strength to him, trashing and kicking and screaming indecipherable threats; but Conrad had spent a lifetime learning how to fight dirty, half a decade of winters in a boxing gym with nothing but the weight machines to keep him occupied, and his body was full of illegal combat drugs. The scrawny wild fuck never had a chance. Despite several gashes from the edges of the metal mask and bruised shins and sides from kicks and punches, Con was able to jerk himself away and roll back onto his feet, only dimly aware that his arm was still on fire.
Fat drops of stone and concrete dripped from the burning overhangs above, and normally Conrad would let himself have a proper disbelieving terror about that, but he didn’t get the chance.
Barely a second after Balefire lost his last grip on the candle, the not-pain across his arm took on a different tenor. A dozen or so White Skullz had been cautiously closing in on him, but they all scrambled backwards as the orange-tinted green flames flared and howled around his arm. Even with the drugs in his system, Conrad couldn’t help screaming as the candle in his hand flared and its melting wax ran like water down his arm. The wick was subsumed into the melting remnants, catching the wax alight with the same flickering off-green flames.
Rivulets ran up his arm against gravity, splitting into streams and patterns he felt he should’ve recognized if he wasn’t flailing backwards trying to extinguish the fire creeping up his flesh. The wax hit his shoulder and flowed under his jacket, quick as flowing water now. Conrad didn’t even have a chance to pull it off before thin lines of flame hit his bared chest and exploded.
No, exploded wasn’t the right word. Split and warped. Veins, that was the pattern the melted greenflamed wax had been tracing up his arm, leaving behind burn scars and a strange glowing just under the skin that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. The last remnants of the candle flowed off his arm and onto his chest with the rest of the still burning wax. Twisting oil-in-water flames spread out in all directions, no longer following hidden blood vessels. Circles within circles traced across his skin, radiating lines slicing outwards from the center of the growing design without any pattern Con could see to their position or lengths. Semi circles of whisper thin lines raced in one direction while thick swaths of fire circled in the other, all drawing out a design he couldn’t begin to decipher in the fractions of a moment it took.
He wasn’t sure he’d even be feeling pain by this point even without the kickass and adrenalin flooding his system. Balefire was back on his feet standing yards away and as frozen in shock as the surrounding Skullz. “What have you DONE?!” Con’s head snapped up at the scream, but he had no reply. How the flying fuck should he know? “You’ve DEFILED the cleansing flame! How- Ho- how-“
Conrad took a step forward and the robed man pulled a gun from somewhere in the folds of his window curtains turned cape. “How DARE you? Defile the flame how you wish, you and your filth will STILL be purged from this world!”
Conrad really should’ve been able to dodge it. He’d seen the gun. He’d had full seconds of time from when it was aimed at him and when Balefire pulled the trigger. The man telegraphed his every move. But his body felt too heavy as he moved, dodging to the side while phantom flames felt like they were trying to flare up his throat and sickly green fire burned his blood. His left leg wrenched backwards and he lost his balance, slipping on rain and blood-slick sidewalk and crashing onto the street. There was a hole in his leg that hadn’t been there before, and the blood that came out of it caught the orangeish green of the firelight and glowed such it looked like it might’ve been afire itself.
There were another two gunshots from Balefire’s gun as Con fell, but there was still only one hole in his leg. Shouting and cursing came from behind him. Con pulled his attention away and behind to see one Skullz crumped over and curled around his gut as red flowed freely, and another with his arm hanging limply as he shouted a litany of curses. He pulled his attention back forward. Balefire was gone.
No, not gone. There. The orange-trim of his robes was just visible as he vanished through the shattered glass doors of the empty storefront.
Where the escape tunnel let out.
One of the White Skullz had gotten brave enough to make another lunge for him, which Con rewarded with a swift punch to the gut and one to the throat, then used his good leg to kick the fucker back into the rest of the group just to make sure they got the message.
Matches was just behind them, working his way through. The reflections of his aviators caught Con’s eyes and the man shouted something he couldn’t make out above the crackling flames of the burning melting building and the shouts and screams of pain. Con waved it aside and pointed to the empty door front, then underneath the street and tracing a line back to the Center, ending it with a mimed explosion.
Hopefully that message was clear. His vision was narrowing down and he didn’t have much time. Kickass in a bag lasted longer than this, he shouldn’t be hovering on a crash already. Did they fuck up the mix of the latest batch? Was there something Duncan added in he hadn’t shared with Conrad?
Con wanted to blame the green flames and the way the veins in his arm still seemed to flicker with unnatural light from the corner of his vision, but he couldn’t see how.
His body leapt through the shattered door front while his brain still spun on questions, and he raced to where years-old memories said the stairs down to the basement would be. Balefire only had seconds of lead time on him. A bullet wound shot through his leg shouldn’t slow him down that much. Fire in his blood should only make him run faster. He’d catch up to the shit before he could do anything. Conrad had time.
00ooOoo00
Floorboards clattered underfoot, kicked up dirt and dust filled the tunnel’s air with grit that caught between teeth and coated the lungs. Conrad’s chest burned and his right arm hung limp by his side, the fire out but the skin still cracked and bubbling. Each impact of his feet against the ground sent jolts of electricity down its length; not of pain, not yet, but sensation all the same. Similar energy roiled up and down his left leg from somewhere in his thigh. Another complex of nerve endings filled his right shoulder with static.
Future Con was not going to be happy with him, but there was no helping it.
It was dark and there was barely any light.
There shouldn’t have been any light. But the tunnel had just the faintest trace of glowing green that flared slightly every time his left foot hit the ground. Con had spared the briefest glance at his arm, but the strange, twisted light in his veins had faded. It surely wasn’t that.
He could hear frantic footsteps racing ahead. Each time the light pulsed, he caught glimpses of the fluttering edges of his cape, colors muted in the near dark. The man was too far ahead. Conrad tried to push himself harder, but his legs weren’t working right. He felt no pain, but the muscles just refused to move like he needed them to. He didn’t have his gun and he didn’t know when he’d lost it. His right arm hung burnt and twitching. His bat was… He didn’t have his bat. All he could do was follow until he was close enough to fight with fists and feet.
Time isn’t working right. He knows he’s racing, the rhythm of his feet is too fast, but he can’t catch up. Until he does. But not because he’s gotten fast, but because Balefire had stopped.
The man’s hunched over something in the middle of the tunnel, wires and cords glinting around them. Conrad screamed at him, but he doesn’t so much as flinch. Time wasn’t working right. He’d never had a crash this bad.
He’s racing forward, but Balefire has all the time he needs to carefully move through the required steps. There were beeps, then short electrical pips of inputs on an unseen board. The metal mask tilts back in triumphal laughter. Then Conrad was on them.
They are on the floor, tangled amongst cords and wires and long winding cables that snaked back and around into the darkness and the beep beep beep of a countdown echoed off the cramped tunnel walls.
There are still bricks in his pockets. He only needed one arm to lift one and bring it down on a skull. Once. And again. And again. Brass and gold metal is bent and buckled and Balefire has stopped fighting back, the colors of his cape fading into the black and deep greys of the tunnel’s darkness. Everything is dark, except for scraps and fragments that aren’t. Faint LCDs glow like stars.
There was a way to do this right. There wasn’t time to do this right. There isn’t time for anything.
Conrad pulls himself up by the wall, biting back a scream before he switches to the left arm. One leg barely wanted to work. His head swims, but he’s up. He’s moving. He’s only feet away from the bomb.
There’s an LCD display and the numbers on it are changing. He could read them if he spent a second to just focus his eyes, could see how much longer he has. He doesn’t have a second. It doesn’t matter how much time there is if it’s Not Enough. It’s not a large bomb, all told. Small enough to hold under one arm once you’ve hefted it up out of the dirt. He needs two hands for that.
There’s a scream at that, whined breath comes out between clenched teeth. It takes only seconds, but more of them than it should’ve. The tunnel ripples in and out of sight in waves until he gets it under his left arm and secured in place. Con turns in the tunnel, away from the Center and the fallen Balefire, towards the street and the abandoned building across it. The electrical jolts up his left leg are growing stronger, but he steps forward. He makes it three steps before his leg buckles. Then again. His left shoulder hits the wall and Con leaves it there, using it to keep him braced as he runs forward.
Stumbles forward.
Drags forward.
Limps and drags himself down the tunnel, not runs. It’s not big, the bomb, but it’s heavy. He can’t use his right arm to help carry it. Unseen flames still crackle and twist around it if his screaming nerve endings are to be believed.
Everything is hurting. The fight hadn’t taken that long, had it? It should still be ten, fifteen minutes before the pain started to hit. He shouldn’t be having trouble using his legs even if his ankles were shattered and half the muscle missing.
He’s halfway across the street now, he must be. He can see the light from the basement at the far end. Is this far enough away from the Center to preserve the foundations from the blast? Far enough away none of the kids would be hurt in the aftermath? He needs to carry it further. He needs to drop it and get out of it’s blast radius. He needs-
Conrad got tackled from behind and the world exploded into agony as he hit the floor. A hand grabbed his neck from behind. Another gripped his hair, fingers tugging into the hair of his mohawk that he kept short just to keep something like this from ever happening again. But unlike all the previous times, his head wasn’t pulled back but instead shoved forward. His head cracked off the floorboards. And again. The world flashed into full color with every strike. Every trace of grain along the boards lit up in perfect detail, every speck of dust and dirt drifting through the air lit and distinct, the manic snarl on Balefire’s face through the cracks of his mask in start relief.
The LCD screen reads 00:22
His head slams off the floor again. The world flashes in full color.
The LCD screen reads 00:21
As the hand pulls his head up again, Conrad shoves back with it and feels cartilage crunching against his skull. Another cry of agony echoes off the walls, but it’s not his this time. Balefire collapses off him. Con’s body screams as he pulls himself to his feet, but it’s been screaming for awhile. It doesn’t matter. He’s on his feet. He’s moving. The light ahead is growing brighter. He isn’t running, but he isn’t crawling either. He’s moving, he can make it to safety. How long does he have, now?
Enough time. There has to be. He can hear the timer counting down behind him. And the sound of a second pair of feet dragging through decades of dirt and dust.
A hand grabs Conrad by the ankle and he goes down for a third time. He hits the ground jaw-first and ever nerve alights at once. There is no flash of color and light this time. He kicks back with his ungripped leg. He makes impact. Another hand grabs for his free ankle. He keeps kicking. His right arm may be in agony, but he can still move both. He hooks fingers into the floor boards and pulls himself forward. He crawls.
He should’ve gone back for the bomb; he can’t know for sure he’d carried it far enough away from the Center’s foundations. He had to trust he did. He wasn’t here to be a self-sacrificial idiot. The Boss would kill him if he dared die in here. Ellie would be devastated. Ellie and the gremlins and Vines and even Duncan. Someday, Ned was going to come looking for him; Conrad had to be there when he did. Cinders would never forgive him for dumping his full workload back on him.
Robin would be crushed. Fucking devastated. Fred had been through more shit in just a few years than anyone should ever get put through across their entire lifetime. They hadn’t even been together three full weeks. Like hell is Con going to let Fred’s new lover get killed after just three weeks if he had anything to say about it.
Time still didn’t move right. He is moving towards the stairs; he can make them out clearly. Balefire keeps trying to pull him back, but boots and leg muscles win over weak scrambling fingers any day. Up the stairs and he’ll be safe. He’s practically at the edge of the light the basement’s single bare bulb puts out. Just a few yards away from the stone floor. He has enough time left to make it.
The impact hit before the noise did. A rushing wind that drove the wall up to meet him with a deafening roar as earth and splinters filled the air with the force of a shotgun blast. There was a great groan of earth, then the echoing splinter of boards as supports gave way and the street came down in a rapid chain collapse racing towards them. The ceiling above shifted and came down and there was an incredibly textured snapping crunch in his ears louder than anythi-
00ooOoo00
Notes:
...I'm sure it's fine.
Not sure y'all need to be subjected to a full-ass dream sequence, so we should just have one more chapter after this. Followed by an epilogue which will probably be short enough to just add to the end.
After -that-, it's time to hit up the old outline and figure out what comes next.
Chapter Specific Content Warnings:
*Repeated uses of Faggot as a slur
*Repeated threats of death against view point characters and 50+ children for being queer
*So much violence, including but not limited to broken limbs, bones sticking out of skin, third degree burns, poison fire in your veins, getting the bottom of your jaw ripped open by chains, bullets in shoulders arms legs and guts, blinding, repeatedly slamming heads against the ground, and attempting to use heavy chains as garotte wires.
*Attempted(?) murder of 50+ kids by bombing the foundations of the building they're sheltering in
*Deadly explosions
*Frantic fist-fights for their life in the dirt
*No one's having a good time by the end
*Tight viewpoint narration cut off midsentence like it's fucking Casin-
Chapter 7: this is just a dream
Summary:
it's just a dream
it doesn't have to mean anything
it wont be remembered
and that's okay
Notes:
The original opening of the final chapter, now a separate interlude because the final chapter needs to be wrestled to the ground and made to submit.
It's just a dream.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The sky above him is full of stars.
Billions of stars, uncountable burning specks of light stretching from horizon to horizon. It’s the kind of night sky you can only get in the middle of the ocean, or a thousand miles from anything built by man. The kind of night sky humans would’ve slept under six thousand years ago and invent entire religions in an attempt to make comprehendible. It is beautiful beyond description.
How strange to find it above a crumbling tenement tower in Crime Alley.
Conrad lays on his back and just soaks it all in. He dimly recognizes his surroundings: The rooftop that lay across the street from his childhood bedroom. The arched forms of gargoyles that could be cloaked angels, or perhaps demons, or just monsters with folded wings stand at the eight compass points, seeming to hold the star-strewn heavens in place with their beaks and claws.
He’s not alone up here. The rooftop is positively crowded these days, though peacefully silent as everyone just soaks in the majesty of the heavens in quiet companionship with each other. He knows this place. He knows this sky. There’s nothing here to worry about, or fear, or be enraged by, or even do. Those things will return in time, but for now, he can relax and ju-
“You just missed it, Rad.” Conrad’s breath hitches at the familiar voice from his left. Slowly (it’s hard to move his head here. He’s not sure he’s ever managed it before.) he turns his head. “Right before you got here, the entire sky did this whole, like, aurora thing and all the stars had this green glow to ‘em.”
Tucker is laying out next to him, hands behind his head, looking over with a sleepy grin. Bright hazel eyes with a hint of green. Light brown hair that’d be blond if he ever moved to a city with more than 15 days of direct sunlight in a year, creamy pale skin, unshaven chin. Con swallows the lump in his throat and he can’t help but glance down at Tucker’s neck. Unblemished skin. An adam’s apple that always stood out, the upper cords of lean muscle.
It's whole. No fist-sized exit wound blown into the side.
Tucker meets his eyes as Con looks back up and gives him a cocky but understanding grin. “Not here, hon. Thought you’d glommed that by now.”
Tucker’s wearing the same outfit Con last saw him in. Tank top, open jacket of thin fashionable leather, a pair of jeans so tight he looks poured into them. Every piece freshly shoplifted within the past week. If Tuck thought his current crew wouldn’t give him endless shit, he would’ve grabbed the proper boots and hat to complete the look.
He’d always been a cowboy at heart.
Conrad can’t remember the last time he felt so lost. His voice hitches with a shuddering breath in, “I don’t remember this part happening before.”
Tucker laughs, an easy hearty thing, “Well, aint been much to talk about before, yeah? The stars though, man. The hell’ve you been getting up to out there?”
Con’s eyes fill with tears he rarely lets himself cry and he wills his arm into motion, managing to roll it over so he can grip the other’s hand tight. “Jesus christ, Tuck. I’ve missed you so fucking much.”
Tucker jumps a little and rolls over like he doesn’t have to push past the weight of an entire crushing sky to do it. “Oh! Oh, Rad, no, firecracker, babe.” He leans over and wipes the tears off Con’s cheeks and his touch feels so warm it just makes them flow faster. “No, Conrad, baby. Don’t cry, not here, hon, no crying here. Not for me.”
Tucker moves in, having a control over his body Con could never hope to match up on this rooftop. He can tell those nearby have started looking over, but he knows even acknowledging any of the others would break him completely at this point. He just keeps his eyes on Tucker, haloed by stars.
“Aw shit, firecracker, I’m sorry. I ruined it, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’d just… Come here.” For the first time in nearly two years, Conrad’s wrapped up in warm arms of tightly corded muscle and sinew. Four inches taller and twenty pounds lighter than Con, even still. He breaths in deep but can’t smell anything of Tuck’s Too Much aftershave or cigarette smoke or cheep whisky. Just car exhaust and alleyway trash and industrial runoff all under thick layers of snow and ice. But Tucker’s body is warm, and his sharp chin with the unshaven not-beard he never gave up on rests on top of Conrad’s head like it always did, and that’s enough.
Con feels Tuck’s chest next to him start to expand with words but puts a finger to his lips before he could say anything. “You’re right. Just… I’d like to watch the stars like this. If that’s alright.” This has never happened before. Conrad’s not sure if there’s some sort of rule they might be breaking, but Tucker just chuckles, a soft light alto to the Boss’ tenor (and Red Hood’s computerized baritone), and squeezes him, “No complaints from me, babe.”
Conrad just hmms under his breath. Then, perhaps a minute later, whispers, “I miss you, cowboy.”
“I’m always right here, firecracker.” Tucker half-whispers back, eyes tracking the whisper thin auroras that are indeed flickering across the sky this night.
“As long as Gotham stands.” Con murmers under his breath, repeating something he can’t quite remember.
“As long as Gotham stands,” Tucker agrees, “As long as the stars still shine.”
Conrad relaxes into the warm embrace and watches the stars slowly spin across the sky. Eventually managing to lose himself once more in the course of events. Aside from the occasional aurora tracing across the sky, the rest of the dreams unfolds as it always does.
Footsteps.
A voice that shifted from one moment to the next
Cold.
Snow.
Stars that fill the sky.
00ooOoo00
Conrad awoke with a start, going from complete unconsciousness to full lucidity between one moment and the next. He sat up in a panic, unformed memories of something important he needed to be doing still recoalescing and promptly slammed his skull against something just half a foot above him.
He dropped back to the ground with a stifled moan. It hurt, everything hurt, but his head was one giant stab of pain. His limbs felt numb, his fingers were barely responsive, and all he could see above him was pure blackness.
“The fughkukuhkk!” Dirt sifted down from above, leaving him hacking. He tried to roll to the side to spit grit from his mouth, but his left wrist wrenched against rock hard enough to break skin. Blearily, Con felt about with his right hand. Rocks, boards. He moved upwards and the mass of splintered wood and fallen rubble just continued above him. Then a pillar. Wooden, at an angle. Behind it, his fingers just brushed against the surface of even more oddly textured stone. No, not stone. It was a smooth but pitted surface; it took a moment to place it just because he’d never reached above himself to touch it before. Asphalt.
He opened his eyes again and saw nothing but darkness. Aside from the pumping of his own heart in his ears, he could hear nothing but the occasional groaning creak of wood, the shifting of earth, and the whisper faint hissing of dirt spilling between cracks.
“……………fuck.”
Notes:
Well, thinks Conrad after a solid minute of mentally screaming, it could always be worse. Not by much, but it's not rock bottom yet.
Chapter 8: Conrad Isn't In This One
Summary:
Duke is having a pretty fun time with lasers.
Jason is not having a pretty fun time with zombies.
Tim will have to check his spreadsheets to determine if the time he's having is fun or not, there are a lot of variables to consider.
Conrad is currently not having any sort of time whatsoever.
Notes:
The file where I dump the electronic equivalent of crumpled up balls of paper for this chapter is sitting at 22k words. Hopefully this final version is more entertaining than Conrad having conversations over coms while pinned in place in complete darkness unable to see or do anything at all.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Duke was having one hell of a night. Like so many in his life these days, it had gone spectacularly off the rails. No casual post-Lucas Trent Center Bat-debrief for him. No Ex-Robin meetup. No hanging with Riko and Isabella and all the rest. He’d only gotten three maybe four good potentially humorous candid shots of Red Hood’s new boyfriend before shit hit the fan. There hadn’t even been time to add any captions to them, let alone get them shared with Steph and Cass (and maybe Tim depending on how sociable the guy was feeling after a night of tending Damian).
He'd gotten to learn about some bits of Gotham history he hadn’t heard of before. He’d gotten way more extended time hanging out with Bruce as Malone than he ever expected, and he’d done blazingly on Yes And’ing off Matches as they had to flesh out aspects of their covers on the fly, thank you. He’d even managed to snag a couple of excellent pics of Bruce in his Unicorn Princess getup, which… Well, he wasn’t sure what he’d do with those yet. Share them, obviously, but how? Put them as someone’s phone background? Order giant posters to hang up in the Batcave somewhere Bruce wouldn’t be able to reach? Convince Oracle to add them to the group-chat’s reaction images folder? So many possibilities.
He's also gotten to wield the one and only Bat-Blinder! Which was awesome (and hilarious) enough on its own, but then he’d had the thought of trying to tweak the lasers’ paths a little with his powers, and… How the hell had he never tried fucking around with lasers before?
Sure, yeah, okay, maybe he went way overboard with them once he realized he could, and it quickly became blatantly obvious to the rest of the Center residents up on the roof that he was some form of Meta. But that was fine. No one up there was going to be a snitch. They would all respect wanting to keep something about yourself secret; most of them were only there because they had a secret they’d failed to keep from people. Usually the ones who should’ve loved them the most. Bruce was going to Loom at him for it, but it was all chill.
Besides, nothing about making lasers do braided loops around themselves, perform 180 degree turns in midair, or all the other wild tricks he was experimenting with had any similarity to a superhero in bulky bright yellow body-armor who turned invisible and teleported through shadows.
As it turned out though, that wasn’t the part the other guys got suspicious at. Kira was giving him serious side-eye through purple-dyed bangs during her break to reload. “Yeah, I’m not even going to ask how Big C just happened to have the perfect weapon on hand for you, Mister Secret Superhero Mob-Kid.”
“You kinda just did, Kira love.” Corey teased as he leaned over the rooftop and, after a moment of careful aiming, shot out the kneecap of a Skullz who’d tried to take advantage of the break in Kira’s fire to make a dash towards the Center’s doors. Despite only being armed with a handgun, the teen had impressive aim over a distance. “I mean, I’m not complaining ‘bout the light-show assist,” he added towards Duke, “but it’s still pretty wild, girl.”
Duke snorted, keeping the majority of his attention focused on the mob surrounding Batman and sending weaving lines of blinding laser-light to any who were getting too close. “First, I’m just as unsettled and surprised as you all are he had this on hand-“
“Don’t even question it,” Nico interrupted with a chirp. “that crazy motherfucker just Knows shit.” They may’ve been only 11, but Nico had been living at the Center since it first opened earlier that year. The semi-kinda-not-technically-legal foster home they’d been in prior having been one of the many that’d gotten folded into Red Hood’s wider network as it got set up. “Like, at this point I’m pretty sure he’s secretly Robin or something.”
Duke bit his tongue to keep from laughing. God he wished coms were still working. Red Hood would be making the most unholy noises. “Second”, he continued, “Not a superhero!” He’d had so much practice with that one, it didn’t even register as a lie when he said it anymore. Besides, tonight he was Zachery (soon-to-be) Malone, who absolutely was not a superhero and never would be.
“Jesus, could you imagine?” He reached deep into his chest, trying to channel Nightwing as his most theatrical. “Admit defeat, Riddler! Your nefarious death-traps stand no chance against the strobbing might of the Laser Light Show!” He fired Calib’s multi-laser over the street, shifting colors until a flickering impression of Red Hood’s bloody bat sigil took shape for a few brief seconds before some punk make a lunge for Batman’s back and he hurriedly twisted the beams back down to burn out the asshole’s corneas before his wild swing could land.
“Nah, girl, it’d work just fine! You just need to get yourself a full team for backup.” Corey crouched with his back up against the brick parapet, reloading his handgun while Kira kept the skirmishers on the far side of the street. “Hook me up with those pellets Bic C was throwing around and call me ‘The Smoke Machine’. We’ll be The Spectacular Multimedia Extravaganza crew, fighting crime with kickass laser shows and sick beats.”
Duke shot him a bemused grin. Corey grinned back, the casual ease he was trying to display betrayed by the way the light of emergency lighting, fires, and lasers reflected off the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the strain around his eyes, and the tightness of his grin. Even for Crime Alley kids, this night was proving to be a lot. Duke got that. It’s why banter was so important. “You put that together real quick, Cor. You just got a bunch of potential superhero team concepts lined up at all times?”
“Always gotta be looking for that next opportunity, girl.” Corey responded with only a slight strain, “Hashtag hustling mindset. Hashtag get this bread.”
“Reloading!” Kira interrupted and dropped back down behind the brickwork to grab for another clip. Corey took a deep breath and rolled himself over, taking over the suppressing fire.
Down below, one of the windows on the second story pushed open and one of the younger kids crawled out of it head first. Ah, not crawling, getting lowered. Hands gripped her by the ankles as she grabbed a hose that was passed to her. It took a second for Duke to recognize the nozzle of the industrial fire extinguishers they kept in the kitchens. Multiple White Skullz noticed the activity and, with shouts and jeers, pulled out their guns. Before they could get a chance to open fire, Nico popped up over the parapets with a yodeling war cry and peppered the street in front of them with bullets, sweeping it upwards and forcing them to stumble back or loose their legs.
There was a blasting roar and the girl swung slightly from the kickback as she unleashed compressed CO2 at the largest spreading patches of flame licking across the sides of the LTC.
Duke hated those flames. The light of them was all wrong. There was a strange twisted not-color mixed in; a sort of silky pale not-quite-green that reminded him of decaying rot and long abandoned hospitals and the weird slimy things that grew in abandoned sewers where something had died. It was a color with a physical presence all of its own, forcing the fire to move around it as they twisted around each other. He could only imagine what it might look like to everyone else who didn’t have access to the Forbidden Mantis Shrimp Spectrum like he did.
Honestly, thank fuck he was the only one that could see that weird not!green. (He’d gotten more than a few looks when he first mentioned how creepy the extra light in the fires looked.) Maybe it was just a side effect of his powers, some aspect of them he hadn’t worked out yet, but he could swear the not!green had noticed he could see it and it was now watching him back. He was going to get kidnapped into another dimension by evil colors in six months, he just knew it. Because that was his life, now.
On the other hand, the fire extinguisher seemed to be having an effect, so at least they didn’t have to worry about an unstoppable demonic firestorm consuming the entire city. Not that night, at least!
As if in response to them finally extinguishing some of the flames, there was a sudden explosion of fire from the middle of the Skullz mob. Duke flinched. Yeah, those flames didn’t give off any Ghost Light, that was another thing about them he hated. There was no warning before that fucking pyromaniac set something else on fire. In this case, it looked like he’d furnace blasted the entire front of the facing buildings for some reason, along with a good portion of the street and sidewalk.
He squinted through the light, fighting through the headache the not!green gave him. Duke started back with a startled hiss. Oh fuck, that couldn’t be good. Conrad and the pyro were fighting over whatever had been twisting the guy’s light, warping it like a funhouse mirror in a horror movie. And when Con pulled away, kicking the pyro back and stumbling free, the nexus point of the twisting light went with him. “Oh fuck, no no no, Con, no, let that shit go, CONRAD!”
The others were looking at him in shock, but he was past that. He’d climb over the roof’s edge and leap if his attention wasn’t completely focused on whatever Conrad was holding. He couldn’t hear Duke from that distance, the boy didn’t have superhearing or coms or anything, but this wasn’t good, he needed to drop that thing before-.
Duke watched in shocked silence as the flames around Hood’s main man roared up even higher. It was the not!green he couldn’t look away from, though. It was… pealing, pulling away from the flames, streamers of the twisting color slumping and falling like it was suddenly subjected to gravity. It was unraveling out of the rest of the fires too, braiding into streamers that whipped frantically across the length of the street as they were pulled in to the maelstrom surrounding Big C.
The actual fire directly around him was starting to pull down too, like streamers in water that was getting pulled down a drain centered right in the middle of Conrad’s chest. The process had started gradually, but by the time the physical flames started to pull in too, it’d been accelerating, and it was only a few seconds more before it was all over. Duke blinked in the silence.
“What the FUCK.” Kira stated to the rooftop in general. “Did he just eat the fire?”
“Robin is supposed to be magic…” Nico offered distantly, though they didn’t look like they were anymore convinced than anyone else.
“Babythem, I really don’t think our District Manager is Robin.” Corey hadn’t taken over covering fire from Kira, but he hadn’t needed to. Even the Skullz were stunned. Then, the Skullz were fleeing, because the pyro fucker had resorted to just opening fire blindly, taking down several of his own allies in the process, before turning and racing into the building he’d just set on fire.
Supervillain logic. Gotta love it.
Then Red Hood’s new sidepiece pulled himself up - despite just getting set on fire and shot at - and raced after him. No one else on the rooftop could make out the series of gestures he made to Matches before running off, but Duke had magic demi-god eyes and his veins ran with ice the moment he realized what Conrad’s hurried hand motions meant.
Then the fucking idiot turned and ran into the burning building after a supervillain headed straight for an armed bomb.
Superhero logic. Don’t gotta love that.
Bruce swung after Conrad and moved to intercept before he could leap through the shattered windows, but the remaining Skullz sensed his sudden desperation and threw themselves at him en-mass to keep him pinned down.
Duke had already turned and started for the stairs by the time Conrad vanished into the flames. The front doors to the Center were still locked, or it would’ve been quicker to leap down from the roof and in go in through the front. But no one had thought to give him the keys, so the stairs it was. Duke all but threw himself down the steps, leaping over those who’s curiosity hadn’t been strong enough to brave the rooftop but was still too powerful to stay behind the defensive barriers, and scrambled down to the basement.
Precious seconds were wasted dodging through pipes to reach the back wall, then more seconds wasted remembering where Con had put his hands to unlock the passage. As he pulled it open, Duke shifted his vision to dark mode and quickly scanned the tunnel. Then cursed loudly. The bomb was gone, just an empty space amongst a tangle of disconnected wires. He squinted and adjusted his focus further along the passage. There they were. The bomb had been dropped in the dirt halfway down, the glow of an LCD screen just visible, but angled the wrong way to read the numbers. The asshole in the metal mask and Con were on the floor even further down, kicking and punching the shit out of each other as Big C tried to get to the far building’s basement. Fuck. Lasers weren’t going to help with this. Maybe he could shadow-port in and grab Con before-
Ghostlight gave him just a few seconds of warning. Duke frantically threw himself to the side just before an explosion fired nails and splintered wood and rocks out of the passageway like so much shrapnel from a shotgun. There was the horrid grinding of rock and stone and the unmistakable sound of the streetway collapsing.
By the time the dust cleared, there was nothing left but solid rockfall blocking filling the entirety of the tunnel’s entrance. Duke slammed his fists against them and only earned himself bruised fists. He grabbed the largest slab of concrete and pulled. It didn’t so much as budge.
They were almost at the far end of the tunnel when it all came down. There was a chance, however remote, that Big C had reached the other building’s basement. It was not a high chance. He cursed up an unending stream the entire way. The coms came back online at some point in the process, but no one saw fit to interrupt him.
00ooOoo00
Jason was having one fucking unholy hell of a night. Emphasis on Hell and Unholy.
Put simply: Something was seriously wrong with the Gravediggers.
Red Hood had never had any actual beef with the Gravediggers. They were just a bunch of teenagers and 20-somethings letting off steam the only ways those raised north of the bridges knew how. Vandalism, racing the wrong way against traffic, doing too many drugs, getting too drunk, getting into fights, sometimes setting shit on fire, and running protection rackets that boiled down to ‘pay us money and we won’t do all of the above near your store’.
What they didn’t do was sell people, pass tainted drugs, or go beatdown random people just because. They didn’t even overly fuck with Red Hood’s shit. Sure, they crossed over the lines sometimes and started shit with his people or threw molitovs at storefronts he’d given his protection to, but it always had the energy of a small dog bouncing around a mastiff yapping its head off like the larger dog couldn’t crush it flat just by sitting down wrong.
Plus, Jason admired their commitment to the whole ‘turn-of-the-century heavy laborers with giant shovels’ aesthetic. It was the kind of overly specific theming not a lot of the small-time gangs stuck to lately. Much as Jason hated to admit it, he kind of missed the days when twenty grown men could look at each other and agree that dressing up like pirates on roller skates and threatening people with razor-lined hockey sticks was what they were going to do with their lives. They were practically adorable. The Gravediggers might’ve been assholes, but they were assholes he was fond of.
They never deserved this.
Later, after the night was over and the bodies burned and the Center secured and the White Skullz scattered and Bruce fucking Wayne properly escorted to the borders of Crime Alley and given the boot because what the fuck Bruce, he was getting everyone together and they were going to figure out who exactly was behind this bullshit.
And then the Red Hood was going to personally put every last one of the miserable motherfuckers right in the ground. Screaming. How fucking dare they make him do this.
Jason Todd looked down from the catwalk into what should’ve been the eyes of a scrawny teenage Gravedigger. From the depths of its bloody hollow pits, blue sparks of something that looked almost but not quite like electricity crackled and flared, sending ripples of bluewhite light through the veins of its face. The kid snarled and let out a ragged, torn roar of agony and rage while its limbs jerked in directions they shouldn’t go. Every limb coiled and stiffened before it tensed and leapt straight upwards.
The catwalks were twelve feet off the ground, a height that would normally make them inaccessible to anyone who wasn’t an Olympic-class athlete, but whatever power crackled through the kid’s body turned it into a near miss. Outstretched fingers scraped along the underside of the catwalk, shaving away slivers of metal but unable to maintain a grip. The Gravedigger twisted as it fell back down, landing on all fours facing around towards the Red Hood.
Jason followed its progress with the barrel of his gun, keeping his breathing steady and waiting for it to land. In the time since the attack had first begun, they’d worked out a system for taking them down. After any display of inhuman strength, there’d be a flare of the electric crackling in the ruined eye sockets before the ripples of excess electricity raced across the veins of their face before grounding in a single spot in the middle of their foreheads, the light flaring around the lines of an otherwise invisible circular sigil Jason couldn’t begin to interpret.
“Sorry, kid.” Jason breathed to himself before squeezing the trigger. The timing was exact, and the bullet struck the Gravedigger’s forehead just as the sigil flared. The boy’s skull exploded into thin white fragments that resembled bloody porcelain far more than bone. The body hit the floor with a dull wet thud.
A hiss of radio static filled the air. Jason winced and turned away. He hated watching what happened after. The skittering scuttling things like insects with too many parts and legs that went the wrong way round crawling out of the shattered skulls of the Gravediggers. Millipedes with spider legs and ant mandibles and half-formed wings all made out of crackles of bluewhite electric light that hissed with radio static for a few brief seconds before exposure to the physical world tore them apart into popping snapping mist.
The empty skulls they left behind at least gave assurance there’d been no hope of saving the poor bastards, but it was the barest hint of silver to line what was otherwise a monstrous bank of rolling storm clouds.
Inhuman screams and cries echoed off the metal walls of the factory floor, punctuated with the crack of gunfire and the occasional bit off cry from one of the injured. Future note: Add ear protection to the on-site gear. Even with his helmet blocking out the worst, it was enough to leave Jason’s head ringing.
There were no other targets near him at the moment. Jason took a second to steady his breathing and count the positive aspects of the whole fucking mess that meant he could honestly tell himself ‘It could be worse’. (It might’ve just been more online therapy bullshit, but he took everything he could get these days.)
First, bless Slice and her boney paranoid ass. Jason didn’t know what damage she had from what traumatic incident in her past (As Steph would put it, their relationship wasn’t leveled up enough to access her tragic backstory) but it left her intensely insistent that any headquarters they set up was rigged such that stairs could be collapsed quickly and easily. Fuck, she was going to be so smug about this.
But without stairs that could be collapsed with the kick of a lever, it was likely the entirety of the Red Hood gang that’d been on site when the attack started would’ve been slaughtered. Hook and Chips hadn’t made it in time. Hook went quick. One of the Gravediggers had leapt through the the loading bay doors like they were foil and crushed her head against the concrete floor. Chips didn’t. His limbs were still scattered across the Long Table. Any attempts at fighting back hand to hand would’ve been doomed from the start.
Second, bless Conrad and Wolf. In the wake of the Halloweeners’ disastrous attempted comeback, the two had reallocated the gang’s weapon caches, including increasing the size of the caches kept at Headquarters itself. Rubber bullets didn’t do shit against whatever the Gravediggers had become, and neither did the low caliber handguns most of his followers usually carried on-site. But up in his office, under the Big Table, and scattered throughout the upper catwalks of the factory there’d been heavy armaments enough for all. Hollow-point and explosive ammo, hand-canons and rifles, and for those who didn’t have the aim and precision needed to hit thumb-sized weak-points (and Christ, he had to figure out something else to call them if he ever wrote this up for the bat-files) shotguns with beanbag shot and anything else that would keep any leaping snarling electric-powered revenents from getting too close.
The three of them were getting raises after this. Or some sort of award. Challenge coins. Pewter statues. He’d figure out something.
Most of all though, bless his fucking rage. He was going to murder the people responsible for this. These had been people – fuck, these had been kids - and someone had murdered them, torn out their eyes, ripped out their brains, and sent their reanimated corpses against Jason and his men as a fucking distraction. They had made golems out of those with no futures, branded runes of enslavements into their brows, and piloted them against those they knew would’ve valued the lives of fucking children over whatever bloodthirst disguised as politics drove them.
His fury was incandescent. But it was his alone.
The Pit provided focus and clarity. It cleared away any distractions or doubts or moral qualms you might otherwise have that interfeared with achiving your goals, and it gave you the drive to see them done regardless of the cost. The purity of purpose had been fading in the many months since he'd first returned to Gotham - thank fucking God - and they'd long since banked down into embers that only flared at moments of immense physical or emotional turmoil. But the first time Con wrapped his arms around him and kissed him like Jason was the answer to a lifetime of prayers, he felt the final traces of the Pit bleed off and wither away-
and fuck the little voice in the back of his head that snickered at the cliché sentimentality of that statement. He’d found someone who’d known him as Robin, Hood, and Fred, knew his flaws and failings and loved him fully and completely in every aspect despite it. If love like that couldn’t break a curse, then what even was the point of anything?
-and even now, staring kids in what used to be their eyes and having to be the hand that put them down, there wasn’t a hint of green to be seen. Everything he was going to to do these miserable fucks would be driven by him and him alone.
Those poor miserable fuckers.
Movement caught the corner of Jason’s eye. He twisted around and looked up. In the darkness of pipes and metal rafters, something blue glinted. Crouched right above the Big Table where the injured were being tended to by Stitches and her assistants was a particularly tall and lanky Gravedigger, jaw lax and bloody sockets firing electric blue.
“SHIT!” Jason swung his guns up and opened fire, but without the momentary weakness that came with the flare of its sigil, the bullets did little more than whip the Digger’s head back and forth and piss it off.
There was a crashing over by the Big Table as one of the riders dove over the laid out bodies into the center and onto their back. Jason saw one of the larger distance rifles from the stockpile in their hands before a deafening crack drowned out the howling and the screaming and gunfire. The Gravedigger gave a wet bubbling howl as it fell, half its jaw flung off by the bullet, crackling blue twisting shapes falling from the gaping mouth as it fell and hit the Big Table with a wet crack.
The kid, Vines he was pretty sure was the name, scrambled away, battering aside something with too many segments to be able to fly like it was before it could dive bomb their face. Hound grabbed the kid by the shoulder and pulled them off the table, then pulled out his own oversized Desert Eagle and unloaded the full seven deafening bullets at point blank into the howling Gravedigger's skull. Limbs twitched and shuddered in the ringing silence that followed before the body finally went still and the last of the crawling parasites disintegrated into static.
Hound caught his Underboss’ eyes from across the catwalks and gave him a firm approving nod. Hound returned it before grabbing fresh bullets from his belt and turning to scan the rafters to see if any others figured out how to climb.
For more kids they’d have to murder a second time.
He didn't even know their names was the thing. He recognized some of them. Faces he'd seen in passing over the years, faces he'd seen growing up, but he didn't know any of their names. Conrad would. He'd be able to tell Jason what their names were. He'd know where they'd gone to school, he'd have opinions about shit they pulled in middle school, he'd have a funny story to tell about some stupid shit they pulled at a warehouse party a year ago.
Conrad would know who their families had been. He'd know who Jason could go to and explain what'd happened to their kids. Who he could apologize to.
Fuck, he wished Radd was here.
Before his thoughts could spiral even deeper, they were interrupted by the sharp alert-noise of Oracle coming onto his private coms.
[[Hood.]]
“One sec, O.” Jason had caught sight of another figure hauling itself up the walls and took careful aim, waited, breathed slowly,
[[Hood?]]
The figure turned and leapt thirty feet across the open air onto what was left of one of the old feeder belts, its eyes flaring from the surge of power required. “There you are.” Bullet met crackling sigil and what was left of the Gravedigger’s head snapped back. It lost its grip on the machinery, falling down and out of sight. The sound of its body hitting the floor was lost under the din.
“Sorry about that. We’re mopping up a zombie infestation.”
There was only a fraction of a pause [[I’m sorry, a what?]]
Jason just hmm’ed softly. “Yeah, some asshole killed off a whole gang, animated their corpses, and is throwing them at us. Luckily, zombies’re shit with ladders.” His voice wildly more casual and lighthearted than what he was actually feeling. “Never mind that. What’s the word?” Because Oracle didn’t reconnect after Jason had switched his coms off without a good reason.
[[The communications blackout around the Lucas Trent Center lifted a minute ago. The Robins are on their way in. No one’s in a place to give a detailed report yet, but the cameras I’ve got are showing minimal damage to the Center itself. It looks like part of the street’s collapsed, and there’s a bit of fire, but none on the Center itself. Red’s probably going to be calling in the fire department on this. If you want to deal with anything before the authorities arrive, you’ll need to get moving.]]
Tension bled out of Jason he didn’t even know he’d been holding. Not all of it, though. There’d been a slight hitch to Oracle’s voice, and he’d spent enough time with her voice in his ear to know what it sounded like when she was talking around something.
“How’s Conrad holding up?”
The seconds of silence that followed his question was answer enough.
Jason gripped the iron railing by his side hard enough that the metal started to creak and deform under his fingers. “O. What. Happened.”
It was another second before Oracle finally answered. [[Signal says that there was a bomb they’d placed in a tunnel under the foundations. One of the attackers tried to set it off. Conrad went in after him. The street collapsed shortly after.]]
Jason was on the factory floor, power walking to the side bay he kept his bike in. One of the remaining Gravediggers leapt out of the shadows with a snarl, then fell to the ground with a bullet between her eyes. “How bad.”
Oracle’s voice went soft, and honestly fuck her for coddling him like he was going to fall apart. It took three shots to put down the second golem-zombie that came at him. He had trouble hitting the sigil for some reason. The body nearly brushed his boots as he stormed past, crushing skittering electric horrorbugs under-heel. [[I don’t know. Signal is trying to organize a team to start digging out the collapse. But it’s not- I don’t-…]] She took in a deep breath and it took everything Jason had not to start yelling for her to just spit it out.
It felt so weird to be this fucking enraged and not have even the barest hint of green clawing at the back of his brain.
[[Both Batman’s and Signal’s emergency beacons made distress calls the moment the blackout went down. I haven’t gotten anything from Conrad. I haven’t been able to even ping his.]] Which generally meant that the beacon in question was under several yards of lead, in another dimension, or…
He could see the small black disc in his mind, splintered and mashed under a bolder, utterly crushed. Electronic bits flung in all directions, dripping and red and soaking into churned earth…
Car horns blared and people shouted as he blazed through an intersection without slowing down. Despite the helmet protecting him from the wind, the speed was still making his eyes water. Oracle was saying more, but he couldn’t make it out over the rushing roar all around him.
This wasn’t happening. Signal had just fucked up surveying the scene. Con was fine. It was just a mistake.
Red Hood was going find whoever was behind this. He would gut them live on television. Their bodies would hang from Wayne Tower till they rotted. He was going to burn Gotham to the fucking ground.
00ooOoo00
Tim Drake had had better nights. He had had worse nights, too. Many that were worse. This wasn’t the worst night of the year, not even the worst night of the month. But it was still ranking solidly in the 20th percentile of nights. He’d spent his daylight hours chasing one dead end after another. Just an endless string of red herrings, false leads, and shadows. The smuggling ring that was supposedly setting up in the back alleys of the three square blocks of Little Romania? Not a trace that it even existed. The supposed ‘curse’ following objects from the Drake Antiquities Collection as they wended their way through Gotham’s auction houses and art galleries? Absolutely no proof that anything untoward had happened in any individual incident, regardless of their frequency and consistency being far off the end of probability. Even the black market weapons deals going down at the Iceberg Lounge were looking more and more like were just cooked up to smear Cobblepot’s mayoral campaign.
Tim was in danger of starting to take it all personally.
Then it came time for nightly patrol. Dick was in Bludhaven, because when given a choice between protecting a city of ten million with a dozen others by your side and protecting a city of five million all on your own, there was only one choice that Dick ‘Don’t Say I’m Like Bruce I’m Not Like Bruce’ Grayson would take. Cass and Steph were at the south end of the city dealing with an elaborately planned heist to break into Arkham that’d been uncovered. And Bruce was spending a night as Matches Malone because it’d been too long since he last got to break out the Jimmy Buffet gear.
Which meant that even though it was Bruce’s weekend to host Damian (as part of the rotating joint custody agreement Alfred set up that no one called a joint custody agreement but everyone understood that was exactly what it was), there was no room for Matches Jr. in Bruce’s machinations, so Damian would have to be accompanied on patrol by whoever was available.
And look who the only person who was available happened to be.
Honestly, even that part of the evening wasn’t terrible. Sure, the kid was prickly, snide, questioning his every decision, and bucking against his leadership at every turn, but he was at least acknowledging that Tim had a leadership position over him. And was willing to follow whatever orders Tim was able to back up with logic and arguments that suited Damian’s interpretation of reality at the moment.
It had been downright brotherly between the two of them until Duke broke into coms and it all came crashing down in fiery disaster like it always did.
At least having all contact with Bruce and Duke cut off managed to convince Damian that this was something worth breaking from their normal patrol schedule. After that, it was just a case of transversing half the city to reach the Alley while dealing with a surprising amount of mid-tier criminal activities. It seemed like half the gangs in Gotham had decided this was the night to go set something on fire, or get in a mass street brawl, or something.
Tim was ashamed to admit that it wasn’t until Jason clicked back into communal coms to state he was positive someone was purposefully delaying his ability to respond to the crisis at the Center and could someone please haul their ass over there and make sure no one was dead, that’d be great that Tim realized someone had stirred up Gotham’s gangs on purpose to keep them distracted.
All in all, they hadn’t been able to reach Crime Alley until right before the explosion.
The night had been steadily dropping in the ratings ever since. It wouldn’t bottom out into the single-digit percentiles until Tim had seen a body, though. (Or enough pasted meat-sauce that matched Conrad’s DNA (that Bruce had on file (because of course he did))). Tim had been through too much stupid shit in his life to make the mistake of counting someone dead until a body was in front of him ever again.
(Even then, there was cloning to consider. (or body doubles (or alternates from a divergent timeline (or twins))))
This case didn’t seem promising, though.
Thankfully, it hadn’t taken Jason long to show up with some of his Lieutenants in tow (and he was never going to get used to the fact that Jason ‘Best Robin Ever’ Todd had fucking henchmen these days (or was fucking henchmen these days)). They’d been able to coordinate with him and Robin while Jason spent his time vacillating between numb shock and screaming at Bruce.
The one who called himself Wolf had shown up, taken one look at the collapsed street and disjointed chaos, and promptly left again. The one called Hound (who looked like he’d had all his hair stolen by Wolf) spent a good fifteen minutes just stalking the length of the block, glaring at everything and muttering to himself and flexing his fists before he’d bled out enough of whatever tension was laced through him to be able to help Robin secure the downed White Skullz who’d been left behind when the rest of the gang had scattered.
Hound was vibrating with the need to start laying fists into the bound and half-conscious gang members but didn’t want to risk the ire of Robin With A Sword. At the same time, Damian was coiled tight with the desire to start dragging them off for what he’d consider proper interrogations but didn’t want to ruin the mystique of Robin in front of ‘Todd’s criminal underlings’. So they were keeping each other neutralized for the time being; small favors.
Duke was down in the basement of the still burning abandoned building with some of the bigger kids from the Center and a few of Hood’s men trying to excavate the tunnel that’d apparently stretched across the street. He’d sworn he saw Conrad and the Chief Person of Interest near that end of the underground passage right before its collapse, and Tim had no reason to disbelieve him about it. If nothing else, it was giving Duke something to do he could feel productive about instead of just pacing frantically or trying to insert himself between Bruce and Jason.
Tim had stolen a few moments for himself and collected samples of the melted stonework and asphalt as well as what looked like a liquefied car. He grabbed video and spectrum analysis of the fires on the off-chance there was something about them that’d show up to mundane technology. The whole thing had the stink of magic behind it, so it was doubtful, but even the magical cursed waters of the Lazarus Pits had unique elements that non-magical devices could detect. In a perfect world, Tim could've just spent all his time focused on that. The ramifications of it all were fascinating.
Mostly, though, Tim spent his time keeping everyone else well away from Bruce and Jason as they had their screaming fight.
No, that was an unfair way to describe it. A fight implies they were both involved, and that was very much not the case. Tim was spending his time keeping everyone else away while Jason screamed at Bruce and Bruce just stood there and took it while staring blankly at the line of collapsed roadway that stretched from one side of the street to the other.
At some point, Tim was going to have to step in and wind things down, but he wanted to make sure his older brother had gotten as much of his anger out of his system as possible first. He couldn’t see Jason’s eyes through his helmet, but Tim had no doubt they were blazing green. For now, however, he spent his time convincing emergency services of the need to send the fire department into Crime Alley to deal with the mess.
To be fair, the fire department was the one part of Gotham’s civic infrastructure that willingly entered the Park Row district. However much the rest of the city might not want to admit it was also a part of Gotham, firestorms would have no respect for the unspoken separation and would be more than happy to spread out from the Crime Alley slums into the parts of the city the rich actually cared about.
Shooting emergency services a few pictures of solid stone and brick buildings who’s fronts had melted like candle-wax under a blowtorch finally got the wheels moving. The first responders were at most ten minutes out when Wolf finally returned with a dozen riders hauling oversized crates on the back of their bikes roaring up behind him.
“Ground Penetrating Radar rig.” Wolf explained in the same clipped word-conserving tone Cass or Bruce used on their less verbal nights. “For when moving into a new warehouse. Make sure there’s no lairs underneath. Smuggler tunnels. Other surprises.” He gestured over to the other side of the parked bikes where a second set of crates had been unpacked and his men were putting the contents together into a drone with an eight-foot propeller span. “To fly over the collapse. Keep readings stable. Keep anyone from stepping on something that shifts and crushes something underneath.”
Tim had never met this one before and didn’t know his tells, but he suspected that the way the burly bearded mountain of a man kept flicking and snapping his fingers in repeated patterns wasn’t something he usually did. Nor the repeated split-second flickers of his eyes over to the collapsed section of street or the way his teeth clicked together at the end of each sentence.
Tim watched as Jason’s men strapped the GPR to the underside of the drone. When they stepped back, one of the heavier tattooed ones flicked a few switches on the portable control panel that’d been setup on the collapsed section’s edge, and with a howling grind of turbines, the assemblage lifted up into the air and began a slow but smooth flight into position.
It was at that moment that Jason’s voice rose in volume loud enough that heads across the street started turning to see what was going on. Tim bit back a sigh and made his way over before anyone else decided to try and break up a fight between crime lords and overheard something they shouldn’t.
“Hood”, he said quietly as he got close, “I know you’re angry, but-“
“But nothing! THREE WEEKS! The only good thing that’s happened to me since I had to fucking crawl out of my own fucking GRAVE and I can’t even keep him for THREE GODDAM WEEKS!” Tim winced. Even through the helmet’s modulator, Jason’s voice was raw and ragged in a way he hadn’t heard since Red Hood gave a properly heartfelt apology for nearly beating him to death. Bruce as Matches just slumped against the nearest support pillar and barely even reacted to any of it.
Tim cautiously reached out, barely touching Jason’s shoulder. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t be, but you’re starting to draw attention; Gotham’s going to be bracing for a Hood/Malone gang war by the end of the night at this rate if you-“
“Am I not allowed to have fucking happiness? Is that it? I find someone who remembers me from before I died but is still able to look me in the eye and speak to me without fucking FLINCHING ever time and you just, what, decide it has to be a trap so just let him fucking run off to his goddam death because it means you don’t have to do it yourself?!”
That got Bruce to flinch, breaking off from looking at the collapsed street to turn to Jason, pain sinking into his face. “Lad… no… You know-“
“NO! I DON’T know!” Jason’s hands pulled against the top of his helmet like he was trying to tug at his hair, “I just know that there was an asshole who was obviously in charge, wearing a mask and cape and everything, with a fucking bomb YOU knew about, and you just ignored him to beat up fucking random NOBODIES and left Con to handle him all by himself because he’s a fucking glorious idiot with a martyr complex who’d…”
Jason’s legs went out from under him and he sunk to the ground with a cut off scream of frustration, still holding his helmet between his hands. Bruce dropped with him, kneeling by his side with his hands hovering just inches away from touching.
“…he’d choose fifty kids over himself every time, of course he would. Goddamit, old man, he’d choose me hurting because he died over me hurting because fifty kids died every time too. I just… He shouldn’t have HAD to, you fucking shit. You were. Right. Here.”
Bruce just hung his head and continued not to say anything. Honestly, Tim couldn’t think of anything he could say that wouldn’t cause Jason to explode further. And he honestly couldn’t really blame his older brother. He still hadn’t pieced together exactly what had happened in the lead up to the bomb going off, but it sounded an awful lot like, well, Bruce had gotten too caught up in beating up the mooks to go after the guy with powers and a mask, so Conrad had instead. Which…
Tim turned to give the two some measure of privacy as Jason continued in a much softer volume, sounding no less pissed but also not flinching away from Bruce’s touch. The drone was still slowly making it’s way across the street, sweeping up and down as half a dozen… (Hooders? Red Hooders? (Tim needed to ask Jason what his followers were called. (Not right now, obviously. Later. (Much later.))) We’ll use Hooders.) Hooders clustered around a cluster of computers and screens to interpret what it was seeing. Their shoulders were either tensed with irritable anticipation, or slumped with growing despondence.
Wolf and Hound were off to one side, conversing in tense low tones. Hound was grimacing and looking off to the side while Wolf’s scowl grew ever deeper. Tim was getting the sinking suspicion that he’d have to intervene in whatever was developing there before much longer.
There was a shift in the breeze, or a shifting of the strange gritty ash that came from burning stonework. Tim glanced over to the Center side of the collapse and-
-collapse and blinked as everything seemed like it shifted a fraction of an inch over without anything actually moving. He shook his head clear. It hadn’t been that long of a night. He’d hadn’t been up long enough for minor visual hallucinations to kick in either. He’d thought, at least. Regardless, he-
A shrill alarm broke in over coms, a sequence of sharp tones Tim had only heard once before when setting up a new emergency beacon for- Jason. He turned, cape billowing from the sudden motion, just in time to see Red Hood leaping to his feet.
Red Hood was racing to his men clustered around the drone equipment, muscle memory making him hold a finger to where his ear would be under the helmet. [[O? O, was that?]]
Barbara’s voice was calm, only the faintest trace of bewilderment lacing underneath. [[Conrad’s beacon just reconnected to the system and sent out a preactivated alert.]]
Tim furrowed his brow, glancing over at Bruce as the older man came up beside him, “Oracle, I thought you had no connection to it? How did it suddenly reestablish?”
There was a faint frustrated sigh. [[I honestly have no idea. But it did. Forwarding the exact location to you now.]]
Tim exchanged looks with Bruce. The man’s expression was even harder to read than usual, a complicated mix of emotions he was sure even Bruce hadn’t untangled yet. The group around the drone equipment had exploded into activity. Jason was gesturing at one specific section of the street that the drone was moving over towards. Hound and Wolf had broken up whatever had been brewing to hurry over, and already hand-held excavation equipment was appearing from packs and off motorcycle backs like magic.
Tim grimaced and checked the time. Only a minute, two at most, before the authorities arrived. There were still so many ways for the night to get horribly worse. Like she read his mind, Barbara clicked onto his private channel. [[Red, quick heads up for you. It’s not clear from the chatter exactly why, but the Commissioner is on his way with a police squad to process the scene. You should prep to get Hood and Malone’s people out of there before they arrive.]]
Tim took in the street, lit by blood-red emergency lighting, backlit with smoldering fires, with dozens of heavily armed Crime Row gangers bustling with a hive of activity as a small crowd of also heavily armed kids watched from the front of the shelter with undisguised interest. Tim let out a deep sigh as he turned to start down the street to where he could already see the reflections of approaching emergency lights. “No promises, O, but I’ll do what I can.”
[[Good luck, Red.]]
Tim just hmm’d and took up position in the middle of the street to wave down the first vehicle to arrive. There wasn’t a lot that could push the night even further down in the rankings, but triggering a shootout between Red Hood’s forces and the GCPD would definitely do it. Jason and the rest could focus on digging out his not-boyfriend. Tim would focus on making sure no one tried to arrest them before they were done.
He hoped.
Notes:
At least two out of the three Batgirls are having a good time. Nightwing might be too.
Next time (hopefully): Rescues! Reunions! Emotions! Fucking with Skullz! Fucking with Cops! Demanding Lawyers! Fucking Closure!
Here's to hoping the next chapter doesn't take a month to piece together, and I don't wind up having to extend the work's length by another chapter in the process.
Chapter Specific CWs
*Teens using firearms against people who legit want to murder them
*Kids dangling out of windows while under fire to put out fire
*Watching people (probably) straight up die because of explosions and structural collapses
*Zombies
*Gouged out eyes
*Hollowed out skulls
*Heads blowing up and creepy alien bug things crawling out
*People getting torn to pieces by zombies
*Having to shoot fucking kids in the face because they've been turned into undead weapons and there's not a fucking thing you can do to save them and all that's left is murdering them a second time.
*Grief/Rage/Panic Attack/Disassociation is various combinations across multiple characters
Chapter 9: Conrad's Got a Plan
Summary:
The best part about waking up buried under an entire collapsed street? There's nowhere to go but up!
Shit's on fire, the Boss and Matches are fighting, the police are here, and so are the frigging Bats.Now this? This is something Conrad can handle.
Notes:
I am suffering Zeno's Paradox when it comes to this goddam story. "Okay, final chapter is dragging a bit long. Maybe I should cut it in half, post what I have now, and then finish the second half and post that later." (Rinse and Repeat... three times, now.)
The next chapter really should be the last one. I just figured 13K words was enough for you all to read in one go. Anyways, enjoy how it takes me over 10K words for Conrad to get dragged out of a pit and then have two conversations.
Chapter specific CWs in the End Notes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
So many
r/AmITheAsshole · Posted by u/raddicalcon 0 hours ago.
WIBTA if I Just Fucking Die Down Here? (time sensitive)
Existential Crises
Hey Reddit, got myself into a bit of a pickle and need to talk some shit out. It’s all kind of time sensitive, so speedy replies are appreciated. But at the same time, there’s absolutely nothing I can do to change events at this point, so it’s not like any of it’s going to matter.
So, I’m currently trapped beneath a collapsed street. Like, the entire thing pancaked. There were these tunnels and the supports were taken out, so the weight of the city street above set off a chain collapse that- You know what? Doesn’t matter.
What’s important is that I’m trapped. I’ve got just enough space to sort of squirm around a bit, shift one of my legs, and feel around to all the surrounding walls with my one free arm. Got my left arm trapped up to the wrist in what I think is the upper half of some old piping that’s working like entropy’s very own manacle. My right foot’s pinned under a fucking asphalt boulder.
There’s no light down here, I can’t breathe in deep because of all the loose dust and grit in the air getting into my nose and lungs whenever I try, and the only thing I can hear is the shifting of rock and the creaking of the big-ass wooden support beam that’s got one end down between my feet and the other end somewhere up above my head and seems to be the only thing preventing the road from collapsing the rest of the way and flattening out this little tiny pocket of space I find myself in.
As you might have inferred yourself from this overview of my situation, it’s a near certainty that I’m going to be dead soon. Either very soon because the support beam gives out and I get crushed, or in a few days when dehydration gets me.
Or maybe we’ll get a good rainstorm and I’ll drown in the runoff. Or someone will try driving over all this shit. Or a gas main got snapped during all this and everything’s seconds away from exploding.
POINT IS, I’m about to die and this is a problem, because I very specifically promised a number of people that this was something I was absolutely not going to do.
Fuck.
It’s not like I went into this planning to be some sort of self-sacrificing martyring idiot. I know my fucking limits. I should’ve had this no fucking problem whatsoever. It was just some scrawny motherfuck in a goddamn tie-dye shirt and literal I shit you not curtains as a cape stumbling around in oversized second hand boots whereas I’m a lean mean Crime Alley thug machine who’s been outrunning gangs, bullets, and cops since he was in single digits. I was high off of blood-lust, adrenaline, and a proprietary mixture of illegal drugs that should’ve left me able to flying tackle this fucker in five second flat without breaking a sweat.
This shouldn’t have been possible, is what I’m saying.
I don’t know how I got fucked up so bad. I mean, I suspect I know. That fucking candle with it’s creepypasta-ass evil green fire fucking burned everything out of my veins. Every scrap of adrenaline, drugs, and fucking will to keep moving.
I still tried to catch up with him before he could activate the bomb, but I was too late.
Oh shit, right. Forgot to mention. The whole reason I was down under the street to get trapped in the first place was because there was this bomb. It’d been set up to blow us up if we tried to sneak the kids out from around the murder mob, and it was also close enough it’d probably do some serious structural damage to the Center’s foundations.
I’m pretty sure I managed to get it far enough away before I dropped it that the Center should be fine. I wasn't, though. Got knocked the fuck out by the explosion and for sure thought I was 100% dead. But I guess not, since here I am.
(I could’ve sworn I’d heard my own skull getting crushed. This fucking awful multilayered crunching that echoed in a way I can’t describe. It must’ve been the fire-asshole’s skull I heard. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to be getting that playing on loop in my nightmares for the rest of my life. All 20 minutes of it.)
I tried. I tried to do this right. I fucking used the emergency beacon. I tried to get the kids out to safety. I tried to get everyone armed to defend themselves. I had help and backup even. We’d kicked everyone’s asses, I’d only taken like two, maybe three bullets, we had the shitheels on the ropes. It should’ve been taken care of.
But then that Balefire asshole had to make a runner for the tunnels.
Like. I’m not sorry I went after him. If I got time-looped back to right before, I’d still charge in after him. There are over fifty kids in the Lucas Trent Center tonight. I’m not going to have the whole fucking building collapse with them inside and a literal murderous lynch mob waiting outside.
I couldn’t let any of the kids get hurt. The Boss wouldn’t have allowed any of the kids to get hurt, I would never have let any of them get hurt. It doesn’t matter if I’m here as Conrad: Just Some Random Dude, or Conrad: Underboss of the Red Hood, I was gonna do whatever it took to keep everyone safe; and once shithead-pyro went running, following was the only thing I could do.
And like I said, I had absolutely no suspicion that I wouldn’t be able to catch his ass. Easily, even.
But just because I didn’t plan to die in such a stupid-ass way doesn’t mean I’m not gonna still die in such a stupid-ass way.
And, like, this is the one thing I promised, to so many people, not to do.
Die, that is.
I promised my little sister that I’d be there for her while she got her life back together after escaping our fucked up excuse for a family.
I promised Caleb I’d be there for however long he decided he needed me. I killed people to keep that little menace safe. I restructured my life to ensure he could have at least a few years of being a kid who had a permanent place to stay with a roof and walls and a bed and food and doors that fucking locked and no one he owed favors to for any of it. It’s gonna be a real shit thing of me to just up and die on him before he’s even finished puberty after all that.Let’s not even get into the rest of the gremlins.
Shit. I’m not going to be there to keep them from trying out whatever sort of solar-blast elbow-dive bullshit they’re getting their brains rotted with as we speak. Fuck, I know my sister and the Boss would both be looking out for them all, but even just the chance that they all wind up back out on the street…Cinders is going to figure out how to raise the dead just to get his vengeance for having all the administrative duties fall back on him again. Old fucker’ll figure out how too, I don’t doubt it.
Oh jesus. Vines. They’re gonna be a fucking mess. Poor kid’s been puppy crushing so hard, like they don’t realize they deserve someone who could actually give them the tenderness they need. I was born with what I needed to thrive in this hellpit, they weren’t. They should live somewhere across the bridges, have a nice well off young man who can give them the sort of domestic bliss loveydovey shit they deserve. I fucking know Vines; if I die like this, it’s gonna become this whole tragic thing. It’d be like that old lady who still wore her wedding dress all the time in that old book the Boss was snarking about the other day.
Shit. Ned.
I’m sorry, Ned.
I’ve tried so hard to make sure I’d still be here for you if you ever came looking. I hope you never need to come and look. I hope you’ve found yourself someplace you can be happy and yourself and you don’t need to return to this fucking city ever again.
I’m so sorry I wont be here if you do.
…
I’m sorry, Boss.
You’ve had so much shit go wrong in your life. More heart-murdering tragedy and drama over the past decade alone than most people get across multiple lifetimes. I never wanted to become another shovel-full added to the steaming pile of bullcrap you have to deal with.
I wanted to live for you, Boss. I wouldn’t have let any of this night happen if I had thought I wouldn’t have been able to keep living for you.
God DAMMIT
Like, I’m not blind. I’m not naïve. This thing we got, it’s great, it’s wonderful, it’s the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to me and probably would ever happen to me even if I got another forty years out of life.
But this power imbalance we got, we know it’s not sustainable. It’s not just the Crime Lord and Henchman dynamic, it’s also the fact that, well… You’re fucking ROBIN, man. You’ve been to space. You’ve flown with literal Gods. You’ve gotten picked up and carried around by goddam fucking Superman himself. You bitch about time travel and alternate realities and magic and all that florid nonsense and just…
Fuck, you’re amazing. And, I’m…
Look, here and now, in the dark, with this pillar above me creaking and a few tons of rock and concrete ready to fall on top of me, and no one to actually ever hear this shit: I’m not half bad. I can hold my own, I’ve got a pretty nice rep for a plausibly-20 year old formerly homeless street hustler. I kicked a whole lotta fucking ass today.
But the moment I try to climb above goons and gangs and guys with big chains and fists, I’m fucking dead. The shit you and yours can do. The sorts of people – fuck, the sorts of things - you guys fight, it’s so far beyond me it’d be like a toddler trying to take on Black Mask’s stronghold with a bubbleblower.
And we’re doing real good despite all that shit! Don’t think we’re not! But Boss, Robin, Fred, you gotta know this isn’t forever. I mean, I’m always gonna be right fucking here, always as goddam smitten, always as head over heels and in awe and thinking you’re the hottest coolest motherfucker out there whether you’re in jeans or tights.
But that’s not the sort of dynamic you latch yourself onto permanently. You’ve been working your way through, and out of, a lotta shit the last year. You’re in a pretty terrible place. Having a hot piece of ass who thinks you’re the fucking coolest thing ever and love/lusts for you unconditionally? That’s good shit. That’s the chunky chicken noodle soup for the soul right there. It’s gonna do you good, and you’re gonna get better.
And it’s not gonna be long before you’re enough better that you don’t need a Hench-With-Benefits crutch to keep yourself standing and fulfilled. And the fucking cape racket is filled with guys’n’gals’n’all sorts of others who’ll be able to match your awesome and stand with you on your level instead of forever looking upwards at you with worshipful eyes.
And that’s fine. That’s better than fine, that’s what I fucking want for you. I mean, I doubt you’d appreciate me comparing our whole thing with my old “Sugerdaddy/Brat-Thug Boytoy” arrangements, but it’s not too dissimilar to this. Shit’s not gonna last forever. The passion or lust or ‘holy fuck god yes right now right here’ whatever is gonna start fading at some point.
And, in however many months, when you’re starting to chafe and wanting something more than a street-rat with fat pecs and a star-struck expression, I’m gonna be all set up to cut myself free. I’m good at knowing the best time to slide my way out of situations like these at a moment where nothing’s had time to sour, but it’s not feeling like I’m ditching on something that could last longer. I got enough former sugar-daddy-esc types who’re still happy to see me to attest to that. And you’d be in a position to cut yourself free without immediately collapsing back into the bullshit and find yourself a nice beefy type who could headbutt you through a wall and take half a dozen bullets and you’ll go off and be absolute terrors together and it’ll be wonderful.
But that shit all counts on me not FUCKING DYING ON THE THIRD GODDAM WEEK.
Because now, instead of ‘That hot punk who helped me keep my shit together and who still runs a chunk of my operations and is always up for the quarterly booty-call if I’m ever in the mood’, I’m just going to be another dead face to remember, another tragedy to compound all the rest. A goddam lesson that hoping for something better, or companionship, or love is a fool’s game and you’re better off just cutting all that shit out and being Death and The Night and whatever else you decide to focus the brooding angst on.
I never wanted to do this to you, Fred.
Am I the asshole? Should I not have followed that fucker into the tunnels? Should I have found another way? Should I not have gone out to fight them in the first place? Should I have dropped the bomb sooner? Should I have just drawn and shot that fucker the moment he first set his hand on fire instead of trying to follow the Bat-rules you -told- me applied only to yourself?
I know how much it sucks to have the dude you’re all gone over die without warning. Shit, it’s been almost two years since Tucker and I’ve been thinking about him constantly lately, it feels like.
I never really did talk about Tucker on here a lot. Not when he was alive, not when he died, and not really since. But I’m thinking about how I used to watch you lay back and look up at the stars and found myself thinking about when Tucker and I would stargaze together too.
Which is goddam crazy-talk and makes no fucking sense because where the hell could you even go in Gotham to stargaze like that?
I guess Gotham Observatory’s got one of those planetarium things, but I’m about 98% certain we never went to something like that. We wouldn’t have been able to last more than ten minutes at that sorta show before one or the other of us got bored and we wound up trying to heist whatever kind of projector they use for those things for the hell of it.
Fuck, were would you even offload something like that? Eh, Tucker probably knows a guy.
Knew a guy.
…
Fuck, Boss, I wish you could’ve met him. You both got such radically different energies, but between the two of you, you would’ve taken over the entirety of Gotham and not even realized it.
Shit. Shit shit. I’m real fucking close to a full-blown panic attack here, guys. Never really had a phobia of anything. I’m fine sleeping in pitch blackness, I’ve been constrained and caged before plenty of times, I’ve even been trapped in tiny little spaces and unable to get out for whatever reason and it’s never bothered me overly. But all three at the same time is doing a real fucking number on me. I can’t lose my shit here! If I try and thrash around, I’m going to rip up my wrist and dislocate my foot and bash myself against the rock. I breathe too deep and all the dust gets into my lungs and I’m trapped in an unending coughing/breathing in dirt loop.
I’m disassociating like fuck. I mean, just look at this shit. I’m spending my last moments on this planet hallucinating a motherfucking Reddit feed. Fuck, my gremlins are right. I spent way too much fucking time on here.
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BetterThanTikTok0 points · now hours ago
NTA: Hey, Con, none of us topside are blaming you for any of this. There were kids in danger. You did what you needed to do to save them. No one would ever expect anything less from you. I mean, I’m
reallynot happy about the whole ‘buried alive and slowly suffocating to death’ thing, but you’re the one who’s always saying that no one can be a true Gothamite until they’ve had at least two or three good traumatic experiences they need therapy for, right?
Besides, I’m stronger than you think; I know you know that about me. Have faith and don’t worry about me. I’m going to be okay.
Vote
Relax I'll Be Safe
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
Just promise me you’ll find someone who’s a properly sweet and loving guy/gal/gen and not just good at faking it like I am. You deserve it.
Vote
Get Your Happy Ending
BetterThanTikTok0 points · now hours ago
Sorry, C, but I’m afraid I’ll be having to spend the rest of my days wrapped in a heavy woolen shawl while standing on the cliffs and watching the sea for a sign of your ship finally returning after all these years. Not a damn thing you can do about that.
Vote
Forever Whistful Can't Stopme
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
You are such a jaitee.
Vote
Fucking Nerd (affectionate) Save
BetterThanTikTok0 points · now hours ago
I’m not going to know your weird family in-jokes, Con. :P
Vote
No One Would Dumass
TheFredHood0 points · now hours ago
Yer autocorrect choked there, Radd?
Vote
Bait? Jail? JailBait? Juice!
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
Jaitee: Clan Lupu Sibling slang for “Obssessed with (or Embodies) Ye Olde EnglishVictoria-Times Dramatics”. I think it’s Indonesian for something?
Vote
Don't Know Actual Origin
OriginalStripe0 points · now hours ago
YTA: YOU MAMABANGER! Dude, you PROMISED!! You SHITHEAD! If there are any of those turdburgers left alive Im gonna learn how to bloe them up myself!! And next time I see the Bat I am gonna kick him right in the goddam ficking nutts!!
Vote
fuck you fuck you
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
My little dude, no, please. One, blowing people up will absolutely get the police on your ass no matter who they are. Two, this isn’t the Bat’s fault, don’t take this out on him.
Vote
No Roguing Before 18!
OriginalStripe0 points · now hours ago
YES IT IS!!! He was RIGHT THERE! UGH! Youve been trying to tell you ALL NIGht but you nevER LISTEN
Vote
its right there idiot
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
It’s a learning process! But seriously, little cos, what the hell are you going on about?
Vote
I Saw No Lurking Shadow
OriginalStripe0 points · now hours ago
UGH, Whatever. Im not even gonna waste time arguing with you. I have vengeance to plan.
Vote
ill show them all
RhinestoneCowboi0 points · now hours ago
Oh shit! Firecracker~ Why the hell did we never think of trying to steal a planetarium projector before?? Those things are programmable, right? To do different shows? We could’ve totally rewired and retricked one for the -best- fucking light shows, that’s brilliant! Especially if you got that kid you handed Caleb’s megalaser to to help you out!
Vote
So Many Spinning Lights
OriginalStripe0 points · now hours ago
You did WHAT?!?!
Vote
How Fucking Dare You
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
I’m getting it back from him at the end of the night, Cal. It’s okay.
Vote
It Was So Cool!
OriginalStripe0 points · now hours ago
But how are you gonna be doing that when you’re DEAD?!?!?!?!
Vote
fucker you cant fucker
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
Babe, I respect your machinations, but no matter how dazzling a light show you manage to provide him, you’re still not getting that threesome with the drummer of Cybersex Ego Death.
Vote
He's Straight As Hell
RhinestoneCowboi0 points · now hours ago
That’s quitter talk!! Why the hell not, babe??
Vote
Straight Till A Full Sixpack
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
Well for starters, cowboy, you’re dead.
Vote
Just Like Me Soon
RhinestoneCowboi0 points · now hours ago
*gasp* Rude!
Oh shit, I forgot, by the way
NTA.
Vote
Don't You Fucking Dare
TheFredHood0 points · now hours ago
NTA: I would’ve done the exact same thing. You know I can’t blame you for running in after him. My blame’s sticking on those responsible for having to make that choice in the first place.
Vote
Gonna Murder Them All
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
It still sucks mighty rancid dick, Boss. I don’t want to leave you like this.
Vote
sorry sorry sorry so sorry
TheFredHood0 points · now hours ago
I know, babe. It does suck. But that doesn’t mean you suck.
Vote
No Tears Not Here
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
Also sorry for using my relationships with millionaires to model our relationship progress instead of treating you like your own thing.
Vote
Worst Way To Compare
TheFredHood0 points · now hours ago
Nah, it’s fucking hilarious, honestly.
Vote
You Have NO Idea
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
???
Vote
??? So Confused ???
TheFredHood0 points · now hours ago
Don’t worry about it, babe. I give it about another week before you finish working it out. Assuming he doesn’t fuck up and give the game away tonight.
Vote
I Can't Fucking Wait
Reality0 points · now hours ago
Hey buddy, can I get your attention here real quick?
Vote
Up And Attem Conrad
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
No. Fuck off. I’m busy having some sort of dissociative mental breakdown. Or is this a fugue-state. Hallucinatory-state? Hey, Memory, the fuck is this thing I’m doing called?
Vote
I Like It In Here Its Private
Memory0 points · now hours ago
Bro, I have no fucking idea what this thing we’re doing should be called. You should’ve hit up the library’s psychology section instead of browsing r/Psychology if you wanted to know the actual answer to this.
Vote
Like I Kept Telling You
Reality0 points · now hours ago
Seriously, though, you really need to be back in your own head for this.
Vote
We Don't Have Time
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you.
Vote
Go Away Fuck That
Reality0 points · now hours ago
Fucking hell. Fine. Just don’t go and try to punch him.
Vote
Oh What Ever Dick
RaddicalCon0 points · now hours ago
Try punching whOH JESUS WHAT THE FU~
HEY
Get Off Me Git
00ooOoo00
Conrad tried to punch him.
Rough hands had him by the shoulders, giving him a firm shake as he snapped out of his near-fugue state. There was light; unexpectedly bright light spilling in from around the thick pillar around him and spilling through the rocks and rubble. Enough to tell that there was a figure crouched over him, but not enough to tell what or who. So he threw a punch.
The burly figure barely flinched, only leaning back slightly to let Con’s fist get deflected off the sturdy leathers he was wearing. He didn’t even have time to pull his fist back for another go before his wrist was grabbed in a strong but gentle grasp. “Easy there, Taz, I gotcha. It’s okay, it’s just me. Don’t go throwing yourself around, yeah, we don’t know your damage yet.”
Con blinked away the spots in his vision as he squinted bleerily up at the figure. The shape was still coallesing, but that wasn’t a common name to get called. “Nails?” he croaked through the grit that coated his throat.
“Hey, there you are, you little devil. Fucking hell, you gave us a scare.” His free hand was clasped up between two broad palms, squeezing tight as the older man’s voice shook slightly.
Con shook his head slightly, as much as he dared to. “…the fuck?”
His senses were coming back online as his mind rehooked itself into his body. He could make out the lighter shadows against darker shadows that formed the outline of Neil’s face, brow furrowed in concern and open relief both. Light filtered down through the cracks and gaps in the stonework above him, with a feet-wide pool right by his side, mostly blocked by Neil’s bulk. His mind took in other disconnected details. The bright neon yellow and blue cord tied to the rigged harness Neil was trussed up in that made it’s tangled way back up into the rubble. The sound of industrial gear grinding away and voices shouting up above. The faint stink of burnt oil and piss and wet sewer runoff that was distinctly Gotham.
“Nails! Hombre! What’s the word?” That sounded like Hound, except for the naked worry and trepidation laced through his voice. “Is he pancake or not?” That was more like it.
Conrad rolled himself on his side just far enough to stretch his free arm into the pool of light, middle finger extended. Neil’s lips twitched as... Christ, was that what Hound sounded like laughing?
“The little shit’s alive!” came from above, followed by cheers. If Conrad didn’t know better, he’d say that Hound sounded fucking relieved. How many days must he have been down here anyway?
Shouted orders he couldn’t make out were given and the sounds of activity kicked up another notch. Static crackled and tinny voices spoke in Neil’s ear. A rueful smile was directed down at him as Conrad blinked the last of the swimming dots from his vision.
“Alright. It’s gonna take a bit to finish getting the rest of the rubble out of the way so we can pull you up and out, alright? How you feeling?”
“Fine-“ Conrad started by reflex, then frowned and took proper stock. He’d regained consciousness with a splitting headache and limbs that burned and pricked like a thousand needles had been shoved into his skin, but that had all faded leaving behind… “Tore up my left wrist a bit when I first woke up. Slammed the top of my head against some concrete. Right foot’s either asleep or crushed, I’m not sure which. Otherwise…” He breathed in deep, slowly as to not disturb the dust, and flexed the muscles of his arms, then his legs. He frowned.
Neil gave him a light tap on the cheek with the back of his hand, “Back on me, Con, let me see your eyes. What’s the damage?”
Con winced as Neil shined a pocket flashlight in both his eyes, the furrow in his brow relaxing slightly at what he found. Con grimaced at what his self check had revealed. “Freaking out a little, not going to lie. But other than that and the stuff I just told you about, I… think I’m fine.” It came out more like a bewildered question than a statement.
Neil’s frown deepened as he slowly panned his flashlight down the exposed parts of Con’s body. “Yeah, you’re… looking pretty damn good for someone who got caught in an explosion.” There was a high-pitched whine of engines from up above, and then a grinding of rock against rock as one of the chunks of roadway shifted and then started to rise up into the sky, an unseen but well-heard drone straining under the weight. “Damn good.”
“Flatterer” Conrad mumbled in a dazed response to the undercurrent of unsettled worry in the other’s voice. “Don’t let the Boss hear you talking like that.”
“Shut up, Taz.” Neil replied, equally distracted. He kept one hand on Con’s shoulder, a skin-to-skin grounding touch, while his other hand slide down along his arms on either side, brushing skin and checking for wounds. The furrow in his brow returned and grew deeper the further into the examination he got. “The Center kids were saying they saw you get shot. Couple of times.” Con swallowed thickly at the unspoken question, his head beganing to swim.
Not for the first time, Conrad felt his gut clench like he’d suddenly found himself standing over the edge of a deep and yawning chasm, toes hanging over the precipice as the earth slowly crumbled and gave way under him. He swayed, just one small push forward from topping into whatever it was that awaited in the darkness.
This wasn’t an uncommon experience for Gothamites.
It was rarely openly acknowledged, never actually discussed, but everyone had the experience. The way that the world would seem to unmoor itself and slip an inch or two to the side as you stood there, looking down an alleyway that you knew had never been there before, the shadows in it deeper and darker than they should be. Or listened to the intermingled thrumming warbles of pigeons and calling of crows and hearing the shapes of words behind the noise. Or looking at graffiti and seeing the hints of riddles that hadn’t been asked yet beneath the chaos. Strange shapes that’d lurk on rooftops that weren’t Bats. Voices from sewer grates, faded and green-stained copper plaques on the sides of buildings that’d never been there before and would never be there again. Looking through a gap between buildings and for an instant seeing a skyline you’d never seen before. Gotham was filled with the unexplained. It was built from mysteries.
But because it was Gotham, there were only two sorts who’d ever try to investigate deeper: Insane warrior-detectives kitted out in themed bulletproof costumes and cutting edge tech, and those who’d be remembered fondly when they inevitably mysteriously vanished down one of those too-dark alleyways never to be seen again.
Even without his specific upbringing, Conrad would’ve been slowly backing away from whatever it was he hung on the verge of awareness of. But for him, those baseline Gotham survival instincts had been reinforced and magnified by years of having the importance of never digging too deep beaten into him. Don’t be curious, don’t investigate, don’t notice when the stories don’t match and pieces don’t perfectly align. Don’t put together the clues and verbal slips to figure out who the crazy man with a ray-gun that you’re working for this month really is behind the mask. Don’t solve the Riddler’s latest conundrum before you’re even finished setting it up. Don’t work out the boss’ master plans if he’s never bothered to tell you them, and definitely don’t offer advice on how to improve them.
Conrad’s shoulder and leg should have bullets them. His left arm should be knifed opened along its length from elbow to shoulder. His right arm should be blackened skin and smoldering meat.
But they didn’t. It wasn’t.
The alleyway stretched before him. Dark with shadows. Conrad took a trepidatious look down its depths and, not for the first time in his life, purposefully turned away. Then, before he could consciously realize that’s what he was doing, his mind hurriedly groped around for a distraction.
It wasn’t hard to find one.
“The kids! Shit! The Center! Are they-“
“Jesus, Taz.” Neil’s voice was almost fond. He’d never openly acknowledge it either, but Neil was Gothamite through and through. When you asked someone a question about something odd or off and they got that certain look in their eye and suddenly changed the subject, you went along with it. Only an asshole would try and push someone down one of those unknown alleys, and Neil was many things but never an asshole.
“Yeah, every single last one of the little shits is just fine, not even a scratch on em. Wolf’s crew is still surveying around the foundations, but last I heard they hadn’t found any signs of the building getting damaged either. Aside from whoever that meatslurry the kids were mopping up at the far end of the collapse was, everyone’s made it through.”
Conrad let out a rush of air, and tension blead out of his shoulders. His head throbbed slightly at the sudden shift in blood pressure and so he just relaxed for a moment. Wolf shifted away from him, and Con heard the sound of ropes getting cinched into place and the sudden whirring grind of engines straining. The crumbling ceramic pipe half that’d landed perfectly along the length of his arm shifted and then began to pull itself out of the dirt.
He waited until the sound had faded to a manageable level before he opened his eyes and looked over to Neil. “How long was it between the kids finding the slurry and them finding me?”
Neil gave a small tight smile and shook his head, “It was a rough couple of minutes there, not gonna lie.
Con nodded. He’d circled around the main question on his mind long enough, so bit the bullet and asked, “How’s the Boss holding up?”
The Boss had been doing so much better the last few weeks. There’d been barely any fists or bullets going into the walls. No green-eyed flare ups, the handful of instances were he’d had to make an example of someone who’d been flaunting the Red Hood’s rules had been carried off in a straightforward manner with only as much violence as was needed.
Conrad worried how much of that control could be lost over something like this.
“He showed up already in a pretty rough state,” Neil admitted, giving his shoulders a grounding squeeze like he knew what Con’s thoughts were. “He’s been spending most of his time either tearing into that big guy who was going up against the Skullz with you or trying to duck around the guys working the pit and dig you out by hand.
Con snorted. That sounded like the Boss. The second part. Not the Picking Fights With Matches Malone part.
Hopefully Matches wasn’t going to take that all personally. It’d be a terrible time for his weird semi-stoicism to fail. He’d seemed to at least respect the Red Hood when conversations brushed up against the topic earlier. Surprisingly poorly informed when it came to a crime lord, but overall cautiously positive. Hopefully, Malone would understand the Boss needing to vent his frustrations somewhere.
There was more shouting from up above, and the scramble of bodies as people he couldn’t see clambered down the rubble to latch ropes around another block of rubble, then bounced right back out like they’d never been.
“Sounds like a lotta people up there.” He said eventually.
Neil looked up from where he’d been typing updates to the Sherwood chat one-handedly, keeping his other hand firmly on Con’s shoulder. “You have no fucking idea. It’s a regular Park Row gala up top. Social event of the year. We got people coming out for it I don’t think’ve ever even crossed into the district before.”
Conrad hmm’d to himself as he looked up at the wooden beam a foot from his face and mulled. “Bet at least some of the Boss’ family’ve shown up by now.” He said, not noticing the way Neil’s eyebrows vanished up under the shaggy flop of hair over his forehead. “Probably some of Malone’s people by now, too. Hope they’re all getting along.”
“Malone?” Neil looked down at him with naked concern. “What the fuck does Malone have to do with any of this?”
00ooOoo00
It was obvious Conrad’s initial estimates for how long he’d been down in the tunnels had been wildly inaccurate; but even still, the earliest it could possibly be was well past midnight by the time the support beam was hauled off of him and Nails and a few others strapped him into a harness to get hauled back up to the surface. Conrad was certain he was fine enough to climb out himself now that he was no longer pinned under anything, but no one else was willing to take the chance.
It would’ve been better if it didn’t remind him of the shit he had to do for certain clients back in the day. At least he didn’t need a safe-word to get out of this one at the end.
The winches and pullies lifted Con well above ground level on the final pull, and for a few seconds, he had a perfect view of the whole chaotic scene that awaited him up top. He could already see the Boss’ crimson helmet pushing through the excavation crew, so time was short. He tried to take in what little he could in the seconds he had.
Before anything else, there were the cops.
Not just a car or two, heavily armored but unmarked, with a strip of lights that could be placed on the roof and taken back in the moment it became unadvisable to be flashing their colors. This wasn’t a case of a couple of cops brave enough and dirty enough to venture into no-go territory to shake down marks for ‘fines’ or find kids to take in for ‘questioning’. No, this was a whole squad. At least a dozen cars, along with an actual prison transport and a shitload of other stuff Conrad had only ever seen outside of the Alley before.
They seemed to be in three main clusters. There was a line casually hanging out, talking with each other, leaning against car hoods, and radioing back and forth who just so happened to be faced off against a line of members of Hood’s gang who had coincidentally and just as casually wound up between the cops and the excavation into the read collapse they’d been doing to get him out.
That was… Honestly, kinda heartwarming. Shit. Guys.
The second cluster was directly opposite the center where a line of bound and cuffed Skullz sat on the scorched and wet concrete and sulked. Everything there looked aboveboard from Con’s quick glance. Taking down information, reading rights, discussing details with… Yeah, that was Robin, prowling around the defeated gang members like the world’s smallest prissiest most heavily armed jungle-cat.
There were a handful of paramedics there as well. Three ambulances, even, with the retreating lights of a fourth just vanishing into the mist much further down the street. There was a moment’s confusion before Con worked it out. The Skullz had beat a retreat, most likely right after the explosion, or maybe when the first of the three calvaries had shown up, and left behind anyone too injured to keep up.
And it sparked a dark and hungry pride in Con to see just how many Skullz that had wound up being.
The third cop cluster was around the entrance to the Center, and -fuck- that. Someone was in front of the door, barring them entrance, and fucking props to that person, but Con would be damned if he let those assholes get their hands on any of the kids and drag them into whatever legal clusterfuck was going to result from the night’s bullshit.
At least it wasn’t on fire, though tracks of melted stonework ran down its sides from where Balefire’s firebombs had hit. He should survey the residents and get some of the artistic ones together to knock heads and see what they could do with that. Decorate it up like beach rocks or a jungle or a Martian landscape or something. Make it all artistic and statement-y and not a reminder of that time someone with parahuman powers tried to murder everyone inside.
The empty storefronts opposite were another story. An entire block of mostly empty buildings sagged where they stood, their street-facing fronts melted and running and still burning in spots. A few decades down the line, when the inevitable shifts in city neighborhoods meant that it was Park Row’s time to get gentrified and upscaled once again, they’d have become a protected historical landmark. Con could just see the painfully pretentiously whimsical boutiques that’d set themselves up in buildings made of intricate stonework and gargoyles that had somehow retained their structural cohesion even as they melted, ran like candle-wax, and resolidified.
It was strangely pretty.
Shit, the way the sidewalk was covered with now solid flows of red and white patterns where brick and mortar had melted and swirled around each other was downright fucking art. Especially the points where it got cut up by steams of granite and concrete that must count as heavier when magically melted considering how they cut through the brick-melt and were still slowly flowing as they finished cooling off. Jackhammer that shit up off the road in ten foot by ten chunks and sell them to rich assholes for a few million apiece easy.
There were scattered cheers and more than a few variations of “Fucking -finally-“ as his feet touched the ground – churned cracked asphalt and rubble coated with a strangely gritty pebbly ash the color and texture of finely powdered brick, but close enough to the ground for him. Shoulder slaps and casual minor bodyslams from the side to denote nohomo affection came from all sides. Then Hound was there in his face, both hands on Conrad’s shoulders as he stared him straight in the eye. “If you ~ever~ pull bullshit like that again, I am going to-“
Whatever Hound would do was lost as a second pair of arms pulled him out of the man’s grip, and he was spun and buried in a bonecrushing embrace that left him trapped between steel pylons masquerading as arms with his face buried between the flexible bodyarmor covering of the Boss’ pecs and surrounded by his leather jacket.
Con had one moment of confusion and borderline fight-or-flight before the scents of cigarettes and gunpowder and sweat and bike fumes and that unique undercurrent that was the Boss’ alone hit him and he let himself go limp. He pressed into the hug. He saw nothing but darkness as he closed his eyes against Fred’s chest. He heard nothing but Hood’s heartbeat – starting off frantic, but now slowing down to its normal rhythm – and the gentle rush of air through his lungs.
Here, warm and surrounded, there was peace. For as many seconds as it would last he had nothing to worry about, or fear, or be enraged by, or even do. Those things would return in time, but for now he could relax and just let himself exist.
After a time that felt too short, however long it had lasted, the tight squeeze around him loosened and the Boss’ own voice came through, the vocalizer toggled off. -
Con hadn’t even realized that was an option for the helmet.
-“Fucking hell, Conrad. I thought we’d lost you.”
Con’s breath hitched and he didn’t try to suppress the shiver that ran down his spine. “I thought you’d lost me, too, Boss.” And after another moment, “I’m sorry.”
The Boss let out an exasperated sigh without lifting his head from where it rested against the crook of Con’s neck. “Don’t. What the hell else could you have done? If my fool ass had been here, I’d have been down there too.” His arms retightened and Con was startled and a little alarmed to realize that the Boss’ shoulders were shaking ever so slightly. There was the faintest stutter to his voice.
“Someone went to hell 'n back to ensure this place became a charnel house before the night was through. But everything they pulled didn’t matter a shit. Because of you.” He sounded faintly awestruck, and that left Con’s head swimming with a whole tangle of emotions he couldn’t begin to decipher. “Because of you, no one died here, not a one.” He shook his head, “You shouldn’t have had to be the one to do it, but I’m glad you did.”
The Boss’ grip loosened slightly and a hand gripped the back of Con’s head as Fred gave a shuddering sigh of relief. “Even more glad you survived doing it.”
“Fuck, Boss. You and me both.” Con took one final moment in the warmth and comfort before mentally steeling himself. He straightened up, Fred’s arms still wrapped around him, to look up at the glowing white eyes of his helmet.
“You said no one died -here- tonight.” The wording had been specific; and the Red Hood wasn’t the type to just say something like unintentionally.
The Boss sighed softly and lowered his head till the forehead of his helmet and Conrad’s rested against each other. “Yeah.” There were plenty of people in Con’s life who’d prevaricate at this point and try to circle around to the details as roundabout as possible. Make it easier on everyone. The Boss wouldn’t fuck around like that. “At least two of your staff were burned to death. Probably. No one’s had a chance to check the bodies to confirm identities.” Conrad squeezed his eyes tight and cursed under his breath. They’d been good people. Everyone he’d collected to run things were good people, but those three specifically. If Balefire somehow wasn’t meatpaste, Con would be fixing that at the earliest opportunity.
“As best we know, all of the Gravediggers are dead.” The Boss continued. Con jolted like a shard of ice had been stabbed into his chest. Fred kept his embrace tight, one hand on the back of his head, one arm around his waist, forehead to forehead. Keeping Con there. “We lost Hooks and Chip to the attack. Magic. Bad magic. Whoever sent the Skullz after you took the Diggers and hollowed them out, then sent them against us so no one could respond to you guys in time.”
There was a scruff of motion somewhere behind the Boss. Not from the gang. They had mostly pulled off and were lingering at the edge of the radius where it was plausibly deniable that they were listening in on anything. The Boss snorted as if responding to an unheard comment. “Yeah, and whoever else is dying in the chaos the fuckers kicked off across the city to keep the Bats and authorities distracted as well.”
Conrad balled up his fists against Fred’s chest, mouth working around words before he finally let out a single soft but heartfelt “-FUCK-“. Names and faces flickered through his head rapid fire. How many Gravediggers? All of them. Marcus, Jerith, Kasey, Sherbrook, Vale, Enrique. The scrawny asshole he had to kick out of a bar while bouncing that one time because she wouldn’t stop hitting on a married girl. The one with the big roman nose and the shy eyes who’s name he never caught. Petro, who’d sat him down to tell him what happened to Adrian and let a twelve year old bawl all over his shit for an hour. He cut the churning recitation of names off with a growl before he could get lost in it.
It was the fucking shelter fire all over again.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out. The Red Hood was careful with his language. He didn’t use the wrong modifier or exact descriptive because he was talking faster than his brain could lay the tracks like most people did. “Whoever sent the Skullz”. The Boss had the same suspicion he did: this whole fucking thing wasn’t on the White Skullz. An outside party had set them up. Given them ideas, a target, information and shit to make it happen, then pushed them out the door. There were people responsible for all of this bullshit he hadn’t gotten a chance to beat the ever-loving shit out of.
Yet.
They would find whoever was responsible. Conrad would hunt. The Boss. The whole fucking gang. Once word spread about the Gravediggers and whatever the fuck else had happened this night, the whole of Crime Alley – Shit, the whole of the Bowery – would be focused on tracking those fuckers down. And when they were found, the unholy might of the Red Hood and every single resource, weapon, and gunner he could muster would come down upon them in a maelstrom of savage blood and unholy fury. That was a certainty.
And since it was certain, Conrad didn’t have to waste a single further thought on it. Not now. Not tonight.
Deep breath in, deep breath out. Plenty of other shit that demanded his attention.
Mainly…
Conrad cracked his eyes open and looked over to where red and blue lights continued to flash in the darkness. “The police are here.”
Hood gave a harsh snort. “Apparently.”
“That’s unusual, right? Not just me? That bomb didn’t blast me into a parallel timeline where the cops actually bother to show up here?”
Hood snorted again, far less harshly, “Nah, this is some unusual shit, for sure.” Fred tilted his head as it rested against Con’s in what would’ve been a wry side-glance if a whole bunch of polished metal and high-grade polymer wasn’t in the way. “Parallel timeline?” Deep amusement laced through his voice. “That’s your first go-to?”
Conrad cuffed Fred on the shoulder, “I’ve heard plenty of your bitching about the kinds of bullshit your lot get tangled up in and it’s just been a few weeks. This night started with me getting into a fist-fight with a magic-man who could melt buildings with fire. It’s only a matter of time before I’m facing off with some weird-ass scrawny version of myself wearing black leather with too many spikes.”
“Nah, that kinda shit only happens to the old man.” Hood replied easily, like he was discussing favorite drive thru orders. “Well, sometimes to Red Rob, but mostly the old man.”
Con bit back a groan. Not the point he was trying to make. But still. “Not you?” he teased. Though now that he thought about it, a few dozen leather stripes and some carefully placed spikes wouldn’t look half bad on the Boss.
“Are you serious?” He could hear the Robin Grin in Fred’s voice. “Whenever I’m going through that brand of bullshit, I get to be the Dark Reflection of What Once Went Wrong and Could Have Been. I may lack the spooky fetish gear, but I do got a fuck-ton of guns. That counts for a lot in Bat-Circles.”
Conrad buried his snickers into Fred’s chest. There was a lot of room for them. “Fuck. The worst part is, I know you’re not joking about any of that shit. Jesus almighty Christoph.”
Those arms were still wrapped around him. He wanted to stay in them forever. Red Hood’s biceps made a far better prison than tons of dusty rubble. But. Con took in a final deep breath and pushed himself back from the Boss, turning to take a proper look at the battlefield around them.
“So. The Bristol parents have already gotten involved, then.”
A heavy sigh. “Likely.”
“That magic fuckstick was probably one of the rich boys and now he’s meatpaste.” The Boss began to rumble a response, but Conrad kept going. Part of his mind had been working on this since the moment he’d first breached the surface and saw the whole swarm of patrol cars scattered across the street with lights blazing. Now a plan was condensing out of the churn of his thoughts and taking solid form. But he needed to feel it out as it fell together.
“They’re going to want to bring the full crush of Gotham down on whoever they wind up blaming for what happened to their boys. We don’t have the capital or influence to stop them. ...But any blow can be redirected.” The structure of it was there, a framework and blue print, but pieces were missing.
He tapped his fingers together in a psudo-snap in Red Hood’s direction, massaging his temple with his other hand. “Boss. In what order do you want shit to be protected. The Center and Kids, Crime Alley, you, the gang, the shelter network as a whole.”
There was a crack of static. The Boss must’ve turned the modulator back on. “Say again?”
“What’s the order of protection? Would you give up yourself to keep the Center safe? Would you give up the kids if it meant keeping Crime Alley safe? Center, Alley, You, Gang, Network.”
The Boss uncharacteristically floundered for a second before shrugging and answering: “The Alley, the Network, the Center, the Gang, Me.” Then he cocked his head and the white glows of his eyes narrowed slightly. “Why are you asking?”
“Foundation Goals.” Conrad replied. Because most of his mind was busy trying to put shit together and the bare-bones Con-Interface that was left up was curt to the point of rudeness at the best of times.
“The foundation of any -good- plan is having concrete and explicit goals to work towards.
And your goal isn’t ‘We want to rob a bank’. -Why- are you robbing that bank? For money? Because there are a shit-ton of better ways to make quick cash than deal with a bank robbery. Do you want to make a statement? Because there are a shit-ton of places to make a statement that don’t have armed guards and the police on speed dial. Do you want to test out some new gear? Draw out a nemesis? Does the guy who’s giving you the orders this week just have a fucking bug up his ass about committing bank robbery? Know that shit. Figure out what you -actually- need to accomplish and work backwards from there. Most of the time, you can skip the entire fucking bank robbing bullshit altogether.”
Growing up, Conrad had heard about the concept of a swear jar, but just couldn’t ever imagine the sort of household that would actually use one.
“After that, you double-check every step of the way. ‘Is this really the best way to accomplish the foundation goal?’ Don’t let yourself get elbows deep into planning some elaborate scheme when you could achieve everything you wanted by just blowing up an armored car and running off with whatever cash didn’t burn up.”
The inevitable response of “Where do you get off giving this lecture given the kinds of shit you’re always pulling?” (from Adrian) would be answered by a casual slap across the back of the head and “That’s because your Boss is always gonna want to do things his own way or put his own spin on things. That’s why you need to keep your foundation in mind. Even when the Boss is insisting on some stupid overly dramatic or complex bullshit, you’ve gotta be in there making sure that everything is still working towards your actual goal. That way, even when shit falls apart, there’s still a good chance you’re gonna come out of it having achieved at least -some- of what you were after.”
Then he’d give them some project to accomplish and have them work up plans to achieve it. Then he’d rip those plans apart with a healthy heaping of verbal abuse and public shaming. Unless you were Bianca. Then you were gruffly told ‘Not completely terrible’ and got to read about Two-Face successfully stealing an armed convoy using your own tactics a month later.
Though dad did buy Bia her first car from his cut of the loot. She managed to keep that thing running and un-chopped for almost eight months before totaling it trying to run down one of her exes.
Good times. Fond memories. Where were we?
Planning.
“Foundation Goal. Keep Crime Alley, the Shelter Network, the Lucas Trent Center, the gang, and Red Hood safe, in that order.” Red Hood hmmed a minor agreement, just watching as Conrad monologued to himself for now. “Problem: One of the rich kids is dead and others are seriously injured. Their parents are pissed and already throwing enough weight around to get a full police presence in Crime Alley, just as a warmup for what’s coming.”
He was talking too low for most of the onlookers to be able to overhear, though he was sure there were at least a few subtle mic pickups or extra-sensative earphones pointed his way. They were keeping their respectful distance, though. Lots of personal space for just him and the Boss. Was that Red Robin hanging out near the half-melted pillar were he’d bodyslammed the fire asshole? That was fucking Red Robin. If you counted the Boss as a Bat, that made three. Fuck, Zachery’s prayers had been super effective. The Oracle must really like that kid.
“Complications: We got no proof about what happened in the tunnels. Above-ground eyewitnesses are limited to the White Skullz, who’re not going to be telling the story right to begin with, and a fuckton of non-cishet homeless Crime Alley street kids, barely any of whom have the good decency to be white. Whatever story the parents and the Skullz spin out of this clusterfuck is gonna be the one that sticks as far as the powers that be are concerned.”
Con started to pace. Not far and not fast, but his feet wanted to wander, almost like they needed to walk down the paths of the various possible approaches before picking the right one.
“Can’t stop the blowback, have to redirect. Pick the target of their ire for them. Preemptively neutralize however much of their version of events as we can, kneecap the story right out the gate. It has to be now, before enough of the city’s woken up that they’ve had a chance to say their piece into every ear that matters. Need a counter narrative out, one that sets up a much more limited set of instigators so even if it blows back, the damage is contained and not directed at the Center or the Alley as a whole…”
Conrad trailed off, staring over at the ambulances a few dozen yards away and a familiar shock of sandy blond hair getting tended to by a pair of paramedics.
The Boss took a step back when Con turned to him suddenly. “Boss, how much do you trust me?”
Hood’s helmet tilted back slightly, “That really depends on what I’m trusting you with, Radd.” Which, more than fair.
Con casually swung around the Boss, coming up beside him in a way that just coincidentally used Hood’s mass to block the line of sight between Red Robin and his mouth. “If I were to, theoretically, get tossed into Blackgate, how long do you think it’d take before I got myself out?”
Hood looked at him blankly (or, more blankly than a featureless helmet usually looked) before he gave an obvious mental shrug, “A few days. Weeks if they’re actively trying to keep you in. A few hours if I have anything to say about it.”
Conrad nodded. “Duel simultaneous plans. First: we make me the scapegoat.”
Hood jerked up with a growl, “Oh fuck no-“
“Boss!” Con kept a grip on Fred’s arm. “Please. Trust me. Listen.” He waited until Fred turned to look at him again. “I’m the one who attacked them. There is no getting around that. Most of those fuckers know me by name. All witnesses agree, any security cameras who’s tapes survived whatever shut shit down will show the same. We can’t avoid that. I’m going to be among the instigators no matter what we do. So instead of avoiding it, we focus on making sure I’m seen as the only instigator. The Center, the Network, the villainous Red Hood, Crime Alley as a whole, they had ~nothing~ to do with this. Just some me, random asshole with a bat. The worst they can do is lock me up at the end of it.”
“Or sentence you to execution. Don’t think they won’t push for it.”
Conrad shrugged, “We’ll blow up that bridge and hijack the prison transport when we get to it.” The Boss muffled a snort, and he was going to take that as a win. “Second part...”
He grinned over at Fred, waiting for his full attention before continuing. “Second plan: We make me the good guy.”
The glowing white of Hood’s eyes narrowed slightly. “How.”
Conrad wanted to glance over his shoulder. Both to make sure Red Robin was still there and also that he hadn’t gotten any closer. But that’d give shit away. “The Gotham courts still accept those Bat-Cam videos as evidence, yeah?”
“Cowl Cam.” Hood corrected reflexively, then narrowed his eyes further. “But yes. From Bats in good standing. So not mine.”
“It’d be fucking hilarious if they did, though.” Conrad shook his head, chasing away thoughts of exactly how you’d go about explaining an average night’s helmet footage to a jury, even a Gotham one. “Red Robin’s shit counts though, right?”
The Boss’ helmet tilted again in the other direction. Con could see – well, couldn’t see, but the body language was close enough – the moment it all clicked for him.
The Boss was smart. Wicked smart. Bat smart. He could still remember Uncle Otto throwing a fucking tantrum over how ‘that punkass circus brat ruined everything‘ after solving on of his Boss’ riddle gauntlets with almost disdainful ease. Con’s forehead scar was still a healing wound at that point, and he’d spent the entire evening grinning stupidly to himself and trying not to touch it while pretending to do something other than listening in on Otto’s drunken bitchfest.
It may have taken a bit for the Boss to fully clock in to how Conrad’s brain worked. Which, honestly, Conrad still wasn’t sure about all the details himself, so that was hardly a slight against the Boss. But now that he had a good grasp on his HencUnderboss’ thought process, Con had to spend less and less time going back to explain every step of how he got to a decision. The Boss was able to follow the logic, see how he got there, and it made something in Con’s chest clench in pitiful gratefulness every time he saw Fred’s helmet shift silently, then give that small nod of understanding and continue on with the conversation in perfect sync.
“So you’ve got some shit you need to do.” Hood began.
“Need to check in on the kids, the Center, some of the guys. Lotta little fires to put out before I can call it a night, yeah.” Con agreed.
“But we got all these cops around.” Hood continued.
“And here I am looking like a disreputable Crime Alley thugboy and all; their distrust is understandable.”
“So you could really do with a reputable chaperone to back you up and assure them all you’re on the up and up as you deal with your fires.” Hood glanced over at the other vigilante and nodded to himself. “Right.” He paused for a moment then shook his head, “Can’t be me asking, though.”
Conrad almost asked why not, but the answer came to him before he could even start the question. The Bats were the Boss' family. He’d assaulted the third Robin, his younger brother, when he was fresh from the Pits, and their relationship was still strained at best. Red Robin had appeared on the scene only recently, right after the newest Robin had shown up and the previous had vanished, A + B – C = no wonder Red Robin was keeping his distance from the pair of them.
“Right. Okay. I’ve got it. Just need to get my game face on, first.”
Red Hood’s arched eyebrow came through his voice. “Game face?”
Conrad just flashed him his best approximation of the Robin Grin. “Trust me, Boss. I got this.”
00ooOoo00
Here’s the thing. Conrad knew all about alternate personas, secret identities, fake aliases, and all the rest. He just didn’t like them. For himself. Personally.
They were useful. For other people. They worked great. If you weren’t him.
There were a lot of schemes and cons that worked best if you had a kid or two helping you sell your bullshit by your side. Conrad had spent a significant portion of his youth being someone other than Conrad. He’d get his personality write-ups, was taught how to change his body language and switch out behavioral quirks. He’d memorize histories, internalize different names until he’d respond to them like his own. He’d be the bored society child, or the semi-feral charge of an exhausted babysitter, or a fellow kidnap victim who could be trusted with secrets, or a suburban kid just hanging out in a park across from a bank. He hardly lacked for experience in those things.
He just hated it.
He hated being someone else. He hated having to put aside his own thoughts and reflexes and behaviors and his whole goddamn name. He felt like every time he packed everything that was Conrad into a box to put aside for the night that he might loose track of it and never be able to find himself again after it was done.
He had nightmares of waking up to find someone else wearing his body, sitting in his chair at the dining table, looking at him with eyes that weren’t his and telling him to get out.
Conrad didn’t do that kind of shit anymore.
Sure, he had a pile of IDs with different names and birthdays on them. Sure, he was happy to lie about his past, his motivations, his thoughts, or what he was about to do. But they were lies. Not the truths of someone he was acting as instead of himself.
It might’ve been a semantic difference, but it was one that kept his skin from trying to crawl off, so he took it.
All that didn’t mean he didn’t become radically different people, though.
Conrad had figured out within his first few months homeless that while there were a lot of men with disposable income and perverse interests who’d be happy to exchange cash for his time, they weren’t all looking for the same thing. Some of them wanted a surly street-rat all full of piss and vinegar they could have the pleasure of making give in. Some wanted a playful brat who’d flirt and tease and gave as good as he got until events tumbled them both into bed. Some wanted a nervous shy kid in over his head who could be lured and manipulated into doing far more than he’d planned to once behind closed doors. Some just wanted a brash cocksure asshole of a kid who’d take charge, tell them exactly what they were going to do, do it, then grab the cash and fuck on out of there so they didn’t have to deal with the guilt and pressure of having been the primary instigator.
And Conrad was happy to give them what they wanted if it meant more cash for the same amount of work from him. He was certainly a surly street-rat, had some tendencies to be a fucking brat, he’d been nervous and brash and all the rest in bits and pieces. The trick was to figure out what pieces and traits the guy in front of you wanted, then bring all those up to the forefront and push the rest into the back. They’d get a version of him, not all of him. Pieces cut off and put aside like a diamond cut so everything glimmered and glinted in just the right way to make people want to shell out way more cash for it than they would’ve the misshapen hunk pulled straight out of the ground.
And as it turned out, that technique worked great for all aspects of life. What people wanted out of a security guard at a fancy nightclub was different than a security guard at a warehouse was different than what was wanted from a maintenance man which was different than what was wanted for a janitor or for car repair. Flip and match and codeswitch like a motherfucker, that was the name of the game.
As he got older and closer to being able to quit the sexwork altogether in favor of actual legal jobs that’d cautiously believe him when he said he was 18, the types of men he was attracting had started to change. Turns out, the sorts of behaviors and personalities people wanted from borderline jailbait street punk with 190 pounds of muscle and a few inches of extra height over them was different than what people wanted from lean tweenage street-rats that could easily be thrown over a shoulder no matter how tough they acted or how tight their sixpac.
No, for a client to feel safe buying meat off the street of the size and type Conrad had grown into, it had to be cheerful, obliging, and kinda dumb. It didn’t matter that there was no way a genuine himbo would be able to survive to adulthood homeless in Crime Alley, that’s what they’d be looking for. And again, Conrad could do that.
Let that part of him that was always optimistic, who pulled out what was good in life and wrapped himself in it, who refused to linger on grief or misery or doubts fill him out till there was no room for the rest of it. Let his ability to ignore shit he didn’t need to think about flourish. See the best in people, be cheerful, ignore the subtle putdowns or red flags. Everyone’s just here for a good time. Be a big ol golden retriever with beefy pecs and an ass you could bounce quarters off of. Everyone’s your friend, even if they don’t know it yet.
Red Robin looked up from typing away at the screen embedded in his oversized gauntlet as Conrad approached. Maybe it was all the time dealing with the Boss and his static vistage, but the kid’s expression was surprisingly easy to read despite the full-face cowl. Or maybe it was just designed to highlight when an eyebrow was arched. He seemed like the sort that communicated through them often.
Conrad really couldn’t blame him, he knew what he looked like. Sure, his jeans had somehow made it through the night without any fresh tears to show for it, and his sleeveless bomber was surprisingly untouched from all the knives and bullets and fire that’d been inflicted on him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still covered with scrapes and bruises from the process of extracting him out from a few tons of rubble. Dirt and dust colored his stripe of hair an off-grey, powdered concrete coated his shoulders and the the dark brown of his skin tinted red with the strange gritty brick-ash that blew on the late night breeze.
The broad cheerful grin and casual stride was at complete odds with the rest of the display. “Hey, Red Robin?” The kid gave a slight nod but was otherwise still as a statue. “I don’t want to interrupt if you’re, um, doing something important…”
The glowing whites of the vigilante’s eyes gave the impression of flickering down to his wrist before squaring back in on Conrad. “Nothing that can wait. Mr…?”
“Conrad.” He replied, like the entire Bat clan didn’t already know everything about him down to blood-type and favorite beer. “It’s just, I need to check in on people and make sure the kids are doing alright, but I’m just a bit worried about the authorities trying stop me because…” he shrugged and gestured at himself.
“You’re under suspicion of terrorism and damage to city infrastructure, consorting with known criminals, and gang activity?”
Con chuckled awkwardly and scratched at the back of his head where dirt and crusted blood had caked on. “I meant more generally than all that, but I guess that too. I mean-“ He glanced over at the neatest cluster of cops, murmering between themselves as they stood off against three times their number of Hood’s gang who formed a casual barrier between them and the bussle of activity around the collapsed street. “I’m gonna talk with them too, just…”
“No, I get it.” There was an electronic blip as the screen folded into Red Robin’s gauntlet and sealed away like it wasn’t there at all
Con grinned and went in for a fist-bump. “Appreciate it, man.” To his credit, the kid matched the fist-bump perfectly, even though his expression didn’t shift an iota.
He had to hope that Red Robin also had modes and this intense aggressively-objective attitude wasn’t one he wore 24/7. Kid was fucking sixteen or there abouts and deserved to lighten up at some point in his life.
Or maybe it was just because he was having to deal with the side-piece of the man who’d beaten him three-quarters to death just over a year before.
“I recognize most of the officers at the shelter, you shouldn’t have much trouble with them.” If you behave came through the undercurrent in his voice.
Con shook his head easily and gestured towards the ambulances as he started to amble over. “That’s important, but I wanted to check in with a friend while he was still here. Looks like they’re going to be packing him up soon.”
Red Robin looked over the array of White Skullz up against the burnt out melted portions of storefront the firefighters had already put out and the smallest crease appeared between his brow. “A friend? These guys were trying to kill you all, weren’t they?”
Conrad laughed, easily vaulting over a half-melted support pillar that still maintained the rough shape of an art-deco muscleman. “If they were serious about it, they would’ve put up an actual fight. Speaking of-“ He bounced, light on his feet, over to a stretcher where the final hookups were being performed on a mountain of bandaged teenage muscle and carefully maintained if mussed blond hair. “Kenny! Glad I caught you, man!”
Kennith jumped, only the firm hands of the pair of paramedics working him over kept him from falling off the strecher they had him in. The entire right side of his face was a dark deepening bruise, marring his pretty-boy features like a low budget Two-Face. The paramedics had stripped his lower half down to the boxers, though scarcely a scrap of skin above the knees was visible through all the bandaging and gauze.
The expression on his face when he saw it was Conrad approaching was priceless. Hopefully, someday, he’d be able to get his hands on a copy of the cowl footage. “What the fuck are you-“
“Yeah, I know.” Con broke in like they were talking sports at the bar. “Shit got kinda wild there at the end. Some of what your buddy with the fire-hands was pulling was-“ he gave a low whistle and shake of his head, expressing with his hands just how how the whole thing had been. “So I wanted to make sure you were doing alright despite how crazy the tussle got there towards the end.” The grin he gave was as apologetic as it was cheerful and casual.
“I’m sorry,” Kennith started with a tone of voice that might make someone less trusting than Himbo Mode Conrad think he wasn’t sorry in the slightest, “Did you just call all this a fucking tussle?!” His face was already darkening, and he looked half ready to leap out to strangle him then and there. Inside, Conrad giggled madly to himself.
“Well. Yeah?” Con snapped his fingers and pointed at Kennith. “Which, hey, before they took you off, I wanted to say: Fucking sick chain-work. That fucker was heavy as hell, but you were just whipping it around like rawhide. Mad envy to you on that.” The poor idiot looked so confused.
“Once they’ve got you patched up and everyone’s had a chance to cool off and all, you should come find and hit me up. I’d love to learn how to do some of that shit! I’d be more than happy to give you some tips on footwork and dodging in exchange for that. I know it’s fucking hard not to overcommit on an attack like that, but if you did your stance shit different, you’d have been able to get out of the way even mid-swing instead of falling for that whole,” he waved a hand at the guy’s well-bandaged crotch, “that a second time.”
Kennith’s face was utterly impassive, save for the deep ruby color it was turning. His voice was strained but otherwise placid. “You want me,”
“Mmhm?”
“To teach you.”
“That’s right.”
“And in exchange.”
“Mm?”
“You’ll teach me.”
“Exactly!” Conrad grinned with all the good cheer of an oversized puppy who couldn’t imagine someone managing to be upset at him over anything. An oversized puppy who definitely hadn’t noticed the way the well-bred kid was biting off every individual word like he wanted to eviscerate each syllable. “You got killer skills; I could learn a lot if we had a chance to knock heads.”
Kennith was silent for many long seconds. Conrad just bounced lightly on his feet with an expectant smile. His eye twitched faintly, and Con could see thoughts and words bubbling up in his throat then getting bitten off before he could express them. Finally, he managed “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Conrad stilled on his feet and cocked his head, “Huh?”
“Fucking TRAIN you?!” There was the spittle he’d been hoping for. If Kennith wasn’t a complete and utter asshole and had the faintest idea of what Con was up to, they’d make an unstoppable street-conning pair. “Did your nonexistent rat-turd of a brain somehow miss the fucking fact I was trying to KILL you??”
Conrad gave a ‘well duh’ shrug that was all in the neck, “I mean, sure, yeah? But everyone says shit when it’s the middle of a bit of rough-house and the adrenaline’s pumping. Never means anything.” Lie lie big fat lie, but the only way they’d know that is if you blink first so don’t “That’s why I said after we all cool down!” He grinned like it was stupidly obvious.
“You-! That-! You!” Shit, Kennith’s face was turning a nasty color. The paramedics were looking worried and started to make concerned noises. Conrad took a small step backwards with an expression of pure confusion on his face. “You think that was all some sort of… Fucking Ghetto-ass street-trash faggot PLAYFIGHT?!”
“I mean…” for the first time, Conrad let his voice sound uncertain. He was just a big dumb confused puppy who didn’t know why people were shouting at him. “wasn’t it? I mean, neither of us were putting in any actual effort to hurt each other or anythi-“
That did it. Just the implication that Conrad had whupped his ass and come away without so much as a scratch (and we are not thinking about that part we are not thinking about that part) without even putting in actual effort tipped him completely over the edge.
“I WILL FUCKING MURDER YOU!” There was shouting as the two paramedics went to grapple Kennith before the boy could lunge off the gurney at him. Others came rushing over to assist as the Bristol boy continued to thrash, clawing towards Conrad.
“I am coming back, do you hear me? The fucking MOMENT they let me out, I’m coming back here, and every last one of you degenerate faggot FUCKS are dead! Fucking bullet between the eyes, every fucking twisted boy, girl, and hermaphroditic freak of you! I am going to PISS on your corpse, you shit eating whore! Make you choke on your own goddam-“
‘Dick’ was probably how that sentence would’ve ended if they hadn’t managed to get him shoved into the back of the ambulance and slammed the doors. Conrad had his hands up and had taken several large steps back from the whole scene. One of the remaining paramedics who wasn’t still blinking in shock shook his head and pointed off, “You should probably get out of here before you rile the rest up, kid.”
“Yeah, sure, not a problem.” Con muttered in faux-shock. “Already doing it” He backstepped and watched the ambulance rock slightly from whatever was going on inside. Red Robin (and his cowl-cam) were still glued to him, so he couldn’t so much as crack a smile. Only in the privacy of his own head could he flip the ambulance off and shout ‘I hope your spend the next week pissing your own ball-meat, you fascist fuckwad!’.
Instead, he channeled a bit of what it’d felt like to wake up pinned under a few tons of rubble and a bit of what it’d felt like to wake up naked and wrapped in a blanket as your client debated the best way to dismember your corpse in the next room. Properly palid and drawn, he turned to face Red Robin and gave a nervous laugh. “Well. Fuck. Either he’s still high on whatever he pumped himself up on,” He really hoped this got played in court if it ever reached that point. Seeing that rich fuck’s parents’ reactions to the casual implication that their darling boy had pumped himself full of pharmacudials before his attempted killing spree would be priceless. “or I drastically misread the whole fucking situation tonight.”
He looked suitably disturbed by the realization as he looked over the line of remaining Skullz, most of them glaring at him where they sat cuffed and battered. Only the looming presence of Sword Robin and a few officers who’s attention was more on him than them keeping them from trying to rush him cuffs or no. Sword Robin hissed at one who looked about ready to shout something, then looked up right at Conrad and narrowed his eyes dangerously.
Con grinned weakly and turned on his heel. He didn’t let his eyes dart around to take in the scene, but he didn’t need to. Not really. The Boss was up on a part of the stone awnings that hadn’t melted down, watching while keeping a low profile. The silent bulk of Matches Malone was nearby him. Whatever was happening, it didn’t look like it was libel to blow up into a war between Gotham’s two most unusual crime families. Several of his fellow gang members were casually turning away, phones slipping back down like they hadn’t just filmed every moment of the confrontation between him and Kennith. Even Zachery was hanging out casually on the pillar he’d hopped over earlier, typing away in chat like Conrad hadn’t been able to see him holding the phone up for filming in the reflection in the ambulance’s windows.
Plan Two (Narrative Judo Flip), Phase One successfully implemented.
He looked up at the Center across the street and the growing cluster of officers looming around the one person standing between them and entrance to a building full of fucking kids who did not need to be dragged into any of the coming bullshit.
Plan One (All Eyes on Conrad), Phase One, begin.
Notes:
Content Warnings for:
*Being trapped underground
*Claustrophobia
*Knowing you could be crushed by several tons of shit at a moment's notice and there's shit-all you can do about it
*Heavy fugue-state/disassociation conveyed through the medium of Reddit posts
*Dealing with societal bullshit against poor people, non-cishet people, non-white people, and knowing the cultural weight is stacked against you
*Fears about Dissociative Identity Disorder and the loss of self
*Violent Murderous Homophobia
*Gaslighting of assholes by viewpoint charactersSections that were cut from this chapter:
*In-depth details about various alternate identities Conrad ran as a kid
*A whole mini-story about the solid month he spent as Josiah, a rich kid who was kidnapped alongside The Actual Target, another rich kid who wasn't meant to be Timothy Drake but wound up being real similar to fandom!Lil'Timothy Drake, and how much Conrad -hates- Josiah.
*Damian challenging Conrad to a fight to prove himself worthy enough to be his brother's "courtesan".
*A whole weird 'thing' with Hound that couldn't work because there's no way Jason would've hung back long enough for it to happen once Conrad was topside
*Zachery's Very Serious Concerns about the human soup he'd been mopping up thinking it was Conrad.Next Chapter: A lotta legal bullshit I really need to try and research. Conrad meets Gordon. Gordon meets his newest headache. Angela returns. Conrad gaslights and gatekeeps and tries not to girlboss too close to the sun. Zachery has concerns. Conrad suffers a realization. And a few videos are tearing it up on r/Gotham.
(Will it also feature 'The End'? At this point, I refuse to comment one way or the other.)
Chapter 10: Conrad Puts It Together
Summary:
Robin dropped into a wide-legged stance, sword raised and pointed to Conrad’s throat and snarled. “Disarm me!”
Conrad took a step back, then hurriedly took a second as Robin moved to follow. “What?! No!”
“You think me a child?! You think me incompetent?! I am neither! Disarm me!”========
Okay, if Conrad could just wrap all this shit up, that'd be great. If his not-a-boyfriend's family could just dial the intensity down somewhere below 12, that'd be great. If the fucking cops would haul their asses out of Crime Alley, that'd be great. If the kids would GET THEIR ASSES TO BED IT'S LIKE FOUR IN THE MORNING that'd be great.
But let's all be honest, it hasn't been a great night so far; no reason for it to start now, eh?
Notes:
====TEMPORARY NOTICE====
The template I've been using for duplicating the Reddit Look in my stories has broke. The Discord server the images were being stored of must've been taken down because they're all broken. I'm going through and fixing the links throughout my fics, but it's a work in progress. All the earlier chapters are going to be broken for awhile, I am very sorry for that. I hope to be done as soon as I can.============
HAH! Finished! Take that, sliding chapter count!
...aside from the Epilogue.
Dammit.Anyway, enjoy about 15K words of Conrad bouncing around in a desperate attempt to tie up every plot thread I could. I've got a raft of Side Stories lined up to fill in those I couldn't. If there're any plot-threads you wanted to see addressed that weren't, let me know so I can make sure I don't leave them dangling.
Chapter Specific CWs in the End Notes
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
708
r/OnlyInGotham · Posted by u/exquisitelynumb 1 hour ago.
Are You Gonna See the JuniorMost Staff Member GO OFF on Cops Like This!!
Gotham WTF
[[Video Description for the Visually Impaired:
Filmed out of a second or third story window down at the building’s entrance. It’s nighttime, the scene is illuminated by a bright white light source above the camera and flashing red and blue lights from numerous cop cars mostly out of frame. The street looks run down, and a section starting at the sidewalk and stretching straight across looks like it’s collapsed. Numerous onlookers are milling around the collapsed section. Buildings on the far side of the street look like they’re burning, though they’re out of focus. The focus of the video is about half-a-dozen police who’re trying to gain entrance to the building, and a short blonde-haired woman standing in their way. Aside from some shifting, the cops do not move during the length of the video. The woman moves side to side a few steps and jabs her finger towards the cops repeatedly but that is the limit of her movement.
Audio Transcription for the Hearing Impaired:
Background audio includes whispered conversation of young voices around the camera source as well as faint police-radio chatter and ambient cityscape noise.
Main Audio Transcript: [Only Woman Speaking]
-violation of the stature on Juvenile Detention which I know you are aware of! Anyone who tries to interview any of these children without both the manager’s express permission and a Center-approved chaperon overseeing the process will get sued so hard their fucking pension will fly off. You’re more than welcome to go and get your warrants but trust me we will tear those things to fucking shreds, along with the future career of whatever judge had the poor judgement to allow such a blatant violation of these children’s rights! If you think for one minute-]]
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Mormith99 points ·1 hour ago
What the Hell am i looking at here?
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Knife2MeatYou34 points · 50 min ago
Is this what happens when the Karen -is- the manager?
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Sailor Goon45 points · 42 min ago
Who's side am I supposed to be on here? I need context!
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Barry200362 points · 31 min ago
It’s Gotham PD down there, so I’m gonna guess the Legal Karen is on side of good.
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exquisitelynumb99 points ·18 min ago
She the side of -angels-, baby!
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exquisitelynumb203 points · 48 min ago
the only peep on staff that showed up tonight keeping the PD from grabbing any of the homeless kids we got here cuz they might’ve seen a gang fight or some bullshit.
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Sailor Goon42 points · 39 min ago
What? They got all that out for just a gang fight? Who the hell needs kid witnesses to a -gang fight-?
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KraigNegg 39 points · 30 min ago
Detectives Child and Trafficking and their good friend Officer Payoff, I believe
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Mornmith5 points · 21 min ago
Ugh, I hate that you’re probably right.
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SkieWatcher1918267 points · 52 min ago
Okay, I know it’s not what the video is about, but am I the only one seeing the fucking RED HOOD just chilling on-top of the awnings of one of those buildings in the background?
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Cape_Watch167 points · 48 minago
That is 100% the Red Hood.
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artisinalpaperboy88 points · 33 min ago
And the cops do noooooot see him aaaaaat aaaaaall. Fucking hilarious.
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Cape_Watch56 points · 29 min ago
Dude uses missile launchers, I wouldn’t see him neither.
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Out_Of_Membrain64 points · 45 min ago
Forget Red Hood, I just need someone to confirm that I’m not crazy and that the guy that woman is chewing out is the goddamn Commissioner of Police himself.
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SkieWatcher191834 points · 41 min ago
Holy shit, I didn’t notice because of the angle, but that is absolutely Commissioner Gordon, what the hell is he doing there?
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matzi188 points · 25 min ago
This video is a microcosm of crazy. The last 10 seconds of it, upper left corner. Tell me that isn’t Red Robin just strolling around like he’s window shopping or something.
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Cape_Watch109 points · 21 min ago
Oh oh! The very last frame! Same corner! That is absolutely Robin stalking that guy next to Red Robin. With his sword out no less~!
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artisinalpaperboy8 points · 19 min ago
What the hell, was this a gangfight with Mr. Freeze, or something?
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exquisitelynumb34 points ·15 min ago
LOL nah, totally opposite element in fact, my man! Don’t you notice all that shit’s on fire??
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VictimOfApollosRubberBall8 points · 31 min ago
Is -this- that big boom I heard at a quarter past midnight?
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exquisitelynumb88 points · 23 min ago
LOL probably!
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SkieWatcher191858 points · 14 minago
I say this with all sincerity, OP. What. The. Fuck?
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exquisitelynumb17 points · 3 min ago
Dude my man I have been asking myself that anew every 15 minutes 2nite!!
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00ooOoo00
Conrad only had a second's warning. Red Robin’s expression shifted ever so slightly right before he felt something sharp and cold press into the small of his back where the length of his jacket left the base of his spine exposed.
“Hold, Lupu. I would have words with you.”
A young voice. Self-assured to an almost insulting extent. Accent sounded like someone trying for mid-Atlantic with a trace of… Honestly, Con couldn’t place it. And all with a burr of someone who’s voice hadn’t dropped yet trying for the vigilante growl.
Two storefronts down, the Boss had stood up, though the pose of his silhouette didn’t suggest he saw any immediate need to interrupt. Red Robin had started to face-palm but changed it into massaging at his temples as he sighed heavily. “Robin…”
“Robin.” Conrad echoed at the same moment, though with much less of the ‘weary older brother’ energy radiating off the other vigilante. “Sure thing. What can I do you for?” He had his hands half up, he realized. He hadn’t meant to but didn’t see any reason to bring them down any time soon.
Robin paced into view, looking like a right shadowy menace with his sword drawn and hood up. The glowing whites of his face mask were narrowed in a judgmental scowl as the kid looked him over. Conrad would normally bristle under that kind of expression, but he’d always had a short list of people he’d take it from, and Robin – any Robin – had always been on it.
“You are the Red Hood’s new courtesan.” Robin stated flatly.
Conrad blinked. “We’re in a relationship…” he allowed, trying to read the kid’s expression through the glower, “If ‘courtesan’ has a specific meaning beyond that in this case… Not that I’m aware of?”
“Tt.” A dismissive tongue-click was his only answer as the boy continued to stalk around him. Conrad turned his head to keep track as far as he was able but didn’t shift his feet. Not with the sword still drawn and pointed at him. “Hood’s suffered numerous lapses in judgement, lately.” And that raised his hackles. Sure, it might be technically true, but it wasn’t some outsider’s place to say that about the Boss in such a judgmental tone.
Still. Sword.
“I wish to confirm you are not one of them.”
Conrad shot a quick glance to Red Robin, who bore the expression of resignation that only came from long suffering, then back to Robin. “I thought that’s what the Bat had been doing the last few weeks.”
“Tt. Father’s been investigating your numerous familial ties with Gotham’s Rogues and underworld. That is not my concern.”
Conrad shifted slightly on his feet as Robin came back around to stare at him straight on. “Alright…?”
“We have committed large expenditure of time and effort to keep you safe tonight.” The kid said with a sneer in his voice that didn’t reach his face. “I wish to confirm this will not become a reoccurring situation.”
“Ho-“
Robin dropped into a wide-legged stance, sword raised and pointed to Conrad’s throat and snarled. “Disarm me!”
Conrad took a step back, then hurriedly took a second as Robin moved to follow. “What?! No!”
“You think me a child?! You think me incompetent?! I am neither! Disarm me!”
Con shifted his path to keep himself from backing all the way back into the line of Skullz and let himself get herded into the shadows of the half-melted overhangs instead. “Like hell I do! You eat fuckers like me for breakfast!”
Robin snarled and made a slight slash towards him. Con had to scramble back over a pile of rubble to avoid it, “And even besides, like fucking hell am I going to try and disarm someone armed with a sword with my bare goddam hands! I’m not an idiot!” His bat was wherever it had rolled when he’d dropped it to tackle Balefire. His knives were either in Skullz or scattered across the street. He still had no idea what happened to his gun. Trying to disarm a toddler with your bare hands was a good way to get everything from the elbows down slashed to fuck and back.
He still remembered that Thanksgiving from when he was seven. It was the kind of practical demonstration that stuck with you.
“Then you are useless! The Hood will not be saddled with with an incompetent hindrance!” Robin snarled and swept his sword down in a slash that would’ve split Conrad’s stomach apart if he hadn’t leapt and rolled to the side.
People were shouting. He could hear the electronic timber of the Boss’ Hood-Mode voice and others. There was movement of people rushing towards them. Conrad ignored all of it. Robin or no, that went too far. His anxieties were his alone. Fuck anyone who wanted to echo them.
There was a good hunk of asphalt that’d been thrown by the explosion about the size of his head that he’d grabbed with his left hand by instinct after the first dodge. He spun-kicked backwards out of the way of another sword blow, over a still moving flow of brickwork. A chunk of decorative outcropping that floated like an iceberg on the flow tore free in his grip as he twisted over it to land on his feet.
“Robin! Disengage!”
“What the shit, demon child?”
“Drop the sword, I swear to-“
The kid was going easy on him, that’s what was so infuriating. His stance was wide, his motions telegraphed, his blade moving maybe two-thirds the speed Conrad had seen him wield it-
From a distance, rooftops away, because even if it’s a quarter mile distant, Bat Fights would never stop being a rush to watch.
-and he still had to duck and retreat another three or four times before Robin made a downward swing Conrad was able to catch. His biceps and forearms burned from the force as he slammed the two pieces of stonework together and clenched them tight despite the ear-shredding screeching of metal.
Conrad grunted as the force of the impact shook through his arms, but it was enough to arrest the blade from slamming right into his face. Before Robin could react, he twisted his arms and spun to his side, trying to wrench the sword out of the kid’s hands through sheer strength and leverage.
Robin, the fucking shit, kept his grip, and he instead wound up heaving a whole-ass child through the air, the masonry losing their grip on the sword in the process. Robin continued the momentum and made a jaunty backflip before landing in a crouch, sword held out to his side with one hand.
Conrad hurriedly readjusted his grip on the rocks and shifted to face him, but Robin just remained where he was for a moment before pulling himself upright in a single smooth motion. With a curt nod, the kid turned on his heel and started back towards the paramedics as he resheathed his sword with a pointed *shink-thunk*.
Conrad panted heavily as he stood there and tried to process the last… eight seconds? One-thousand, two-thou- Yeah, eight fucking seconds. Okay.
A firm hand slapped Conrad on the shoulder, jolting him back into his body and the present. “You alright there, Radd?”
“Your family has no standing to call mine crazy, anymore. I’ve revoked it.” Con rubbed at his throat, and the faintest smear of red came off on his fingertips. He looked up to where Red Robin was stalking after Robin, who had that particular set to his shoulders Conrad recognized from younger siblings and gremlins who were in full ‘I don’t hear nothing’ mode.
“So does this,” he gestured at the retreating forms, “mean I pass or failed?”
“Probably passed. He’ll pop up later tonight and tell me,” even with the vocoder, the Boss’ voice took on a bitingly posh imperious tone, “'Your Concubine managed not to be a complete failing in every possible way. I will hate him forever because he is unworthy of life much less love, here is a picture of a cat I drew for him, I will now stab you because giving hugs goodbye is for baby children.'”
Conrad snorted and shook his head, “Jesus fuck. You done DNA testing on him? Made sure he’s not somehow part of the family? Great Uncle Jerrico’s branch, maybe. Uncle Otto has to set up a metal detector at family gatherings because of them, you know.”
They also weren’t invited to Thanksgivings anymore.
The Boss shuddered, “Tía, I don’t want to think about the chaos either side of his family being tied in with yours would cause. Darkest Timeline shit.”
Con looked at the blood on his fingertips as he rubbed them together. “Was he really willing to risk me getting gutted if I wasn’t quick enough on my feet?” It honestly wasn’t something he’d normally take offense over – even caught off guard, he’d have been able to keep out of the blade’s way in his sleep - but the memory of suddenly having his body and reflexes failing him out of nowhere was still burning hot in the back of his mind. The thought of having his limbs turn to useless lead while trying to dodge Sword Robin…
Nix on the not fun thoughts.
“I’m about sixty percent certain he would’ve pulled his strike before it actually hit.” The Boss stated. “Fuck if I know how that kid’s mind works, though.” He leaned in, the metal of his helmet cold against Con’s ear as his voice crackled in a whisper, “He was born to and raised by the woman who thought shoving me into a tub of rage goo was a great idea. I try to give him allowances.”
“You alright, kid?” Conrad flinched at the sudden voice. Even Fred’s fingers tightened on his shoulder as they both turned to find Matches Malone; the giant of a man had somehow appeared with perfect silence-
For, what, the third time tonight? The fourth? Once was chance, twice is happenstance, and three times is something you really need to pay attention to, Conrad.
- and was now frowning at the thin trickle of blood running down Con’s throat. “Did he actually-“
“Barely any pressure.” Boss cut in with an almost protective insistence. “Not something to get your tights in a twist about.”
Con shot Fred a side glance. This was not the time to be antagonizing neutral rivals, even if he was temporarily in their territory. But Matches’ near-impassive face had a cast to it that spoke of… Whatever the murderous mob-boss equivalent of Grounded Without Suppertime would be, he supposed.
Matches Malone trying to ground Sword Robin. That’d be a conflict that’d level a neighborhood.
“He wasn’t attacking with any actual intent.” Con added, “Just being a little shit like little br-kids do.” He winced internally at the partial slip. Malone hadn’t even known that the Red Hood had started working with the Bats. He certainly wouldn’t know that they were kinda-sorta-probably-actually family. Fortunately, the crime lord seemed to have missed it.
“He was still coming after an unarmed man with a bladed weapon. Right after you survived an explosion.” Matches was… Hmm.
Conrad actually couldn’t tell.
He was usually good at sussing out someone’s mood and what they thought about shit; between growing up in a family with more than its fair share of near-Rogue levels of untreated mental imbalances, then living on the streets where knowing what each and every adult around you was planning to do was critical to living another night, he’d gotten a lot of training.
But Matches… He’d been hard to get a read on all night long, but now it was like he’d disconnected himself from his facial muscles altogether. Conrad could see faint shifts and micro-expressions like faint ripples across a placid lake as something giant swam around meters below, but they were all so brief – and so conflicting – he couldn’t translate them.
He’d go with “unhappy” for now.
“Honestly, I feel a shit ton better than I did before the explosion. Something about spending some time forced to just lay down and do nothing.”
Matches’ head turned to him and Conrad watched himself in the reflection of the man’s sunglasses. He shrugged his jacket up higher, letting the fur lining drape over his bicep where one of the missing bullet holes should’ve been and continued to look innocent.
Getting nothing, Malone’s turned his attention to scowling at both Robins over Conrad’s shoulder. Feeling like an invisible pressure had been taken off, Con turned back to the Boss. Behind him, at least a dozen of the gang were hovering at a semi-respectable distance, glancing between them, Malone, and the Robins, looking unsure of exactly what to do. His confrontation with the younger Robin had drawn a lot of attention. Protective attention, he realized with another twinge of gratitude in his chest.
It’d been years since more than one or two people had given a shit about him at a time. He wasn’t sure what was bringing it on, but considering he’d be willing to ride and die for just about everyone under Red Hood’s command, maybe it wasn’t that hard to understand. Still unfamiliar, though. And heartening.
Regardless, the crisis had been averted. He tried to wave them off, but they were having none of it. Shades tilted her ever-present helmet dubiously, even when Con mouthed ‘I’m fine.’ to her. Which drew the Boss’ attention. When he turned and saw everyone hovering, he just gave a faint metallic sigh and waved them off as well. That got them all moving.
Just in case any onlookers had any doubt who actually gave the orders around there.
“It’s probably best we start pulling people out before I go deal with the Center.” Conrad offered to the Boss. “If they’re considering jumping into a fight with Robin, then they’re definitely going to try and jump the cops if they move to arrest me.”
“Already gave the orders, Radd.” Hood’s voice is faint indulgent through the electronic masking, and Con winced internally. That was dangerously close to giving the Boss an order. Even heavily weighted suggestions were a no-no unless specifically asked.
According to his family.
Who worked for fucking supervillains, not morally-complex vigilante crime-lords who they were also fucking.
(Well, some of the family were fucking the Rogues they were working for. Probably. Statistically some of them had to be.)
He was being flustered. Put a rein in on that and refocus on task. The Boss was still talking.
“I gave Wolf the order to pack shit in and head out. Everyone else is to break and follow once the bikes get through. We’re just keeping folks behind in case the cops try to block them in.” Fred gave his shoulder a squeeze, “I’ll be sticking behind just to keep an eye on things from a distance, and you’ll have Big Rob and Little Rob if things look like they’re going to get messy.”
There was a nonverbal grunt from behind. Malone had returned his attention to the two of them with a scowl, a matchstick getting worked between his teeth like one of Smokes’ unlit cigarettes. Man had gotten moody as fuck after the fight. Conrad couldn’t really blame him; adrenalin crash was a hell of a drug. One of the depressive non-fun drugs, no less.
“You want them to arrest you.” It was stated plainly, not as a question, and undercut with a deep thread of judgment.
Conrad laughed. “Hardly. Just being realistic about,” he waved his hand at the flashing red and blue lights illuminating the street, “all this bullshit. The Bristol Boys’ parents are out for blood already if they’ve gotten the biggest police presence Crime Alley has seen in almost thirty years in under…” He paused and turned to Hood with a questioning tilt of the head.
“Less than an hour after the explosion.”
“Jesus…” Con shook his head, “Under an hour in the middle of the goddamn night. The people who are up past midnight calling in that much influence aren’t going to be happy if the patrol cars come back without some sort of sacrificial ram cuffed in the back.”
His eyes narrowed as he looked out over the scene, the first of Wolf’s crew slowly weaving between the haphazardly parked cruisers while the police stood back and watched them go. “And I’m going to be fucking damned if they try using any of those kids as their scapegoat.”
“So you don’t want them to arrest you, you’re just ready to sacrifice yourself and don’t want anyone stopping you.” Malone’s voice was, if anything, even less impressed and the matchstick between his teeth was in danger of getting chewed in half.
The Boss started to say something, but Conrad placed a calming hand on his chest. This was his thing to get pissed over. “’Sacrifice?’ I’ve already thrown myself on one grenade tonight, I’m not going for a double.” Malone tilted his head in the same way the Boss did whenever he was trying to convey an arched eyebrow. Con fought against the urge to roll his eyes. “Look, it’s not a sacrifice when there’s a dozen outs before we even hit a trial date. But those all depend on maintaining the fiction that I’m just some lone wolf operator, and it’s gonna be a bitch to pull that off if the entire gang shows up to start a war the moment the GCPD so much as tries to take me in for questioning.”
Matches Malone shifted on his feet and crossed his arms with the baring Conrad usually saw out of people strapping on body armor and and checking ammo clips. “I was out there, too.”
Conrad’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at the crime boss, “No.”
Matches tilted his head, “But I was. That’s just factual.”
God save Conrad from self-sacrificial idiots. Who weren’t himself. “No. I am not getting the goddamn Phantom Mob Boss of Gotham City tangled up in this petty-ass bullshit. Fuck no.” The ghosts of family lectures past were screaming in his ears. He could practically feel hands grabbing him by the collar to shake him. You do not raise your voice to a crime boss, you do not make demands, what the fuck, Conrad, your parents are going to be so disappointed in you.
Well, his parents disowned him for kissing a boy and his dad tried to kill him over it at least twice, so fuck ‘em, said the other voice in the back of his head, and fuck you too, Mister Malone.
“If you really feel a need to pay us back or keep your honor, you can always lend a hand or some explosives to the Boss when it comes time to hijack my prison transport after the trial.”
“You’re already planning to have your prison transport hijacked.” Malone stated flatly. If he added the slightest buzz to his voice, he’d sound just like the Boss with his vocoder on.
“Not planning. That’s just the worst-case scenario.” Conrad waved a hand dismissively, “And if you’ve got a plan for the worst-case scenario, everything else is golden, right?” It wasn’t right, but he didn’t have the energy or fucks to get into it now. As evidenced by the fact he’d run out of the fucks necessary to not go off on a whole-ass crime lord with his Boss right there.
If Fred was into spanking, Conrad would’ve been suspicious of his subconscious purposefully acting up the brat angle. It wouldn’t have been the first time his own brain had sabotaged him like that.
“But that’s only gonna come up if I’m found guilty and get a death sentence. Otherwise, they’ll just throw me in Blackgate. Which, sure, that’d be a week or three of hell before I got myself out, but it’s hardly the worst thing ever.”
Matches and the Boss exchanged looks. Or what passed as a look when one side had a featureless metal helmet and the other had mirrored shades that covered half his face. Conrad all but rolled his eyes, “It’s Blackgate. I helped with my first prison-break out of that shithole when I was seven.”
“When you were seven? How-?”
Con grinned, his eyes following the last of the bikes weaving past the watching cops. Vines had turned to give a wave back at them and Conrad returned it with a two-finger salute. Sweet kid. A fucking puppy dog, really. What Ned would’ve been if Ned had been scrawny and white and suborned their self-harm tendencies into a love-affair with the tattoo-gun instead.
“Look, everyone knows the security at Blackgate is for shit.” Con started as he turned back to the two crime lords, who were looking like they were posing for the cover of the world’s most brooding album ever. He waited for the faintest of nods before continuing, “They use motion sensors to cover the stretch between the second fence and the main prison walls, but the budget for those got whittled down by the skimming everyone who put their hands on it took, so they’ve got about maybe a third the…” Conrad frowned and waved a hand, trying to grab a term he wasn’t sure he’d ever actually heard, “nodes or whatever they need to run it. So they had to leave it all setup so that it only catches movement from things that’re more than about 70-80 pounds because who the hell are you gonna have locked up at Blackgate who’s lighter than that, right?”
Malone had the look of sudden realization and pinched the bridge of his nose. Conrad grinned. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen someone have that reaction as they realized they could’ve been busting their boys out for a fraction the cost and effort than whatever they’d been doing before.
No, that’s not it. It’s something else…
“So yeah, when I was a kid, I must’ve done the Tyke Trek half-a-dozen times. Set up some explosives against a weak point of the wall to give someone a hole to squeeze out of. Toss messages over into the practice yard to get picked up in the morning. Set up a balloon one time that had an LED attached to it to flash some kind of message to someone inside, never did figure out what that was all about.” He shrugged. The last of Hood’s gang were slipping away across the collapsed street and through back alleys that the cops couldn’t reach and wouldn’t follow even if they could.
“But yeah. It’s Blackgate. I get sent there, I bust out. It’ll be a bitch to have to dedicate time to the runaround, but better that then have the full fury of the Powers that Be come down on Crime Alley as a whole for what went down here tonight.”
“You don’t really think they’d actually-“ Malone started.
“You know what happened the last time Bristol royalty got killed in Park Row!” Conrad almost shouted.
Matches flinched at that like he had the last time it’d come up. Well, there was the faintest twitch in the corner of his eye, and the subtle movements of his fingers stilled for a moment. But in what little Malone-speak Conrad had managed to learn through the night, that counted as a flinch. Hood’s vocoder made an indecipherable sound.
Conrad bit back on his volume before continuing. “I am not going to let everyone here get subjected to that fucking bullshit again just because some asshole got pulped by his own fucking bomb! If they demand blood, it’s going to be mine. I’m going to make them take mine.”
He took a series of deep breaths and let them out slow. He shook the remaining tension out of his hands and rolled his shoulders. “Right. Game face. Back in the rhythm. Smiles and sunshine, you little shits.”
The Boss put a light hand on Conrad’s shoulder, then bumped his helmet against his forehead as he turned around. “You use that phone call to grab that lawyer I told you about. He’s not the best, but he’s loyal as fuck and owes me so many favors. We’ll work from there.”
Con gave a small grateful smile, “And I still got that beacon in my jacket. If it looks like they’re gonna be dragging me into a back room or I’m about to ‘accidentally trip’ down multiple flights of stairs, I’m going to be using it.”
Fred didn’t wrap his arms around him, but he did grab Con’s jacket by the collar to pull him in a little closer. There was the weight of an entire unspoken conversation about them that Conrad was about 95% certain he wasn’t imagining. It boiled down to: Yes, Red Hood hadn’t come before, no, that didn’t mean Conrad had lost the slightest bit of faith in him, and Fred was both appreciative on a level he could never express and also thought Radd was more than a bit of an idiot for it.
At least, that’s how Con interpreted the silence before the moment faded like mist and he straightened back up.
He could hear the traces of the Robin Grin in the Boss voice as he gave Con a nod, “Alright, knock em dead, babe.” There was a faint shift in Malone’s posture behind him and the breathy static of a sigh echoed from the Boss’ helmet. “Figuratively. Knock em dead figuratively.”
Con just laughed and gave a wave as he turned towards the Center entrance.
00ooOoo00
The GCPD did not seem happy about having the entire Red Hood Gang bail on them in the space of minutes and their mood had turned dark by the time Conrad had to make his way through them to the Lucas Trent Center. But Conrad had his game face back on. Everyone here was his friend, and he moved with the casual assurance of someone who knew he belonged there and knew everyone else knew it too.
It probably wouldn’t have been enough, but it was impossible to miss the gleaming helmet of the infamous Red Hood as he leaned casually against rubble watching everything with an unreadable gaze. Or the silent cowled and caped shadow he’d reacquired, though Conrad only knew about that because he’d glimpsed a warped reflection of Red Robin in the remains of the crashed car’s melted windows.
Between the two former Robins keeping watch over him, casually strolling like he was heading down the sidewalks in the nicer parts of town, and keeping up a steady patter of “Excuse me, officer.”s, “Just need to get by you.”s, and “Evening, Sir”s, Conrad passed through the gauntlet with a minimum of trouble.
His intent had been to approach the cluster of officers in front of the Center silently and catch them off guard, but that was shot to hell the moment the kids at the windows caught sight of him.
“Connie!” a girl of no more than 10 was leaning out an open window on the third story while one of the older teens grabbed her by the shirt collar to keep her from tipping out altogether, “I gotta use a fire hose! On actual fire!!” Every head, from the kids peering down from the window to the knot of police on the ground, turned towards him at once and the night air exploded into noise.
Questions about whether he’d really just kicked Robin’s ass, to graphic retellings of their favorite parts of the fight he’d just been in, to questions about whether he and Red Hood where ~kiiissiiiiing~, and many more he wasn’t able to process before one voice rose up over the rest.
“Conrad? Oh thank God!” Angela came barreling through the officers clustered around the entrance, the girl’s elbows shoving aside the ones that didn’t move for her. Her five-and-a-half-foot frame was held in a way that did it’s best to be imposing despite being inches under than the shortest of the officers around her. Her carefully styled hair had been wrapped up in a loose bun, bits of braiding still in evidence but mostly abandoned. The nervously frantic worrying had been replaced with steel in her bones and fire in her eyes. The one officer that tried to put a hand in her way received a glare Conrad’s own mother would’ve been proud of.
She crossed the ground faster than a mere stride should be able to and grabbed him by the arms in a vice grip strong enough to bruise. “Thank God you’re alive. I am on a razor’s edge of murdering these upstanding officers of the law and you need to take over for me.”
Conrad felt like he was in the process of getting mugged by a chipmunk as he blinked down at her. “That’s what I was- What have they been doing?”
“Doing? I’ll tell you what they-“ she spun on her heel fast enough Conrad had to pull back to avoid getting wacked in the face by the loose hair of her bun. “-If you so much as touch that door handle, I am bringing suit against the city, the police, and especially you for unlawful entry on private premises, do not test me on this!”
The hefty trenchcoated officer who’d begun to approach the door stopped and stepped back again with his hands half raised in grudging acknowledgement. Angela turned back to him looking like she was ready to tear someone’s throat out. “That! They’ve been doing that. For the past two hours since they got here! They want to interview every child at the Center. They know we don’t have the staff on hand to make sure they’re all properly chaperoned, they know that these are homeless kids who don’t even have guardians to advocate for them, they know how illegal that all is,” the last part was again spoken over her shoulder at a heightened volume to the cluster of cops, “and how very sued that would make them,” she turned back to Conrad, “but they just do not give a single solitary poop!”
Her fury did something to her normally high-pitched Bristol accent that turned into something Conrad would’ve found more fitting coming from some sort of fancy witch casting curses using that pitter-pat-pitter-pat rhyming-scheme he could never remember the name for. He had no doubt she would’ve been throwing those curses too if was actually an option for her.
“They do not have a warrant, they do not have due cause, and if I am condescended to one more time for being a girl or still in grad school, I am going to absolutely loose it and daddy’s going to be having to pay my bail for assault and battery of a police officer.”
Iambic Petameter! That was it! She should totally be cursing them all in Iambic Petameter!
“You’ve held them at bay for two hours?” Conrad knew that wasn’t the most important piece of information to latch onto, but it was the one that struck him the hardest anyways.
“There was a half hour break in there somewhere when they went to grab someone from the Bowery Precinct who’s supposed to be their Juvenile Officer, whatever that bullshit means.”
Conrad made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and gently pulled his arms free of Angela’s surprisingly powerful grip. “Alright, I’m here, I’m on it. Thank you for manning the gates for so long without me.” He added after a moment. “You gonna be alright? Should I get a ride home for you, or-“
Angela cut him off with a laugh that was only slightly hysterical. “Oh god, no. Shift isn’t over for another three hours, there’s no way I’m leaving all these kids alone with just two volunteers, especially since THEY SHOULD ALL BE IN BED BY NOW“ shouted again over her shoulder, this time directed higher. A dozen voices squeaked and yelped as windows suddenly slid and slammed shut amidst the giggles and squeals of any group of kids who’d just gotten caught at something.
Angela looked up at him with deep resigned exhaustion. “But before I head in and take care of all that, you are in need of legal representation. But we don’t have that. So you’re going to have me instead. Alright?” she asked in the tone of voice that made it crystal clear that this was not, in fact, a question or request, but merely a confirmation of a fact he had no choice in.
Conrad nodded and lightly patted her upper arm. Bruises on his own arms notwithstanding, he was still a musclebound Crime Alley thug, and that was about as much physical contact he was comfortable initiating without potentially spooking her.
He move past her, letting himbo Con resettle over him as he approached. “Hey, officers!” He grinned cheerfully at the group as he finally stepped forward, hand extended to the tall mustached color-swapped Matches Malone look-alike that seemed to be in charge. “As the kids let you know, my name’s Conrad and I’m the highest person on the org-chart who’s still appearing in public. What exactly seems to be the problem here?”
Having a section of stone-worked façade crack and slide off one of the buildings behind him at just that moment to punctuate his introduction was completely unplanned but perfect none the less.
00ooOoo00
In the moment of silence that followed the rumble of collapsing of stone, Conrad properly took in the group arrayed against him for the first time.
Matches Malone’s mis-colored TV Movie actor had moved to the front and was standing with his legs spread and braced, hands in the pockets of his worn heavy trench coat, and cigarette between his teeth. The mustache was a bit bigger and bushier than Malone’s, and the crime boss’ mirrored aviators had been switched out for large square eyeglasses that still managed to catch and reflect the light almost as well. Blond/Red hair that’d started to heavily grey, and a cast to his shoulders and baring that spoke of stubbornness to rival an ox and an ability to shoulder the bullshit of the world and keep moving to match. Dangerous.
The one he would call Officer McJowls stood just behind him to the left in a perfect unconscious backup position. A suspicious scowl that was probably carved in place, a battered fedora like he was trying to cosplay as an extra chunky Joe Friday, and a broad thickness that most would chalk up to donuts and a desk job, but was uncomfortably similar to the builds of the older off-season boxers who used to give him tips at Dino’s when he was dodging the winter cold by spending all day lifting weights and throwing punches. Also dangerous.
To Officer Leader’s right, though not positioned for immediate backup like the other, was Officer Ma’am. Stern, Latina, with brown hair so dark as to be almost black that went down far further than Conrad had believed GCPD regulations allowed. She, at least, wasn’t posed like she was immediately prepared to throw down, but that didn’t mean her stance was any less ready. Her eyes were piercing and scanning him in a way not dissimilar to how Red Robin had first looked at him. Three for three on dangerousness.
Shit. Not only had the GCPD sent out officers, they’d sent out competent officers.
Officer Rookie stood behind McJowls, taller than the rest, Scandinavian, and with her hair cut so short Conrad had to wonder if she’d somehow traded her allotment of hair-length to Officer Ma’am in exchange for favors to be named later. She held herself in a puffed out ‘Just try it, punk’ pose that seemed more bluster than promise. Not (terribly) dangerous (yet).
Officer Smug was to the side, writing something down in his notebook and sparing only the briefest dismissive glance up at Con before looking back down. Tall, lean, black, with the thinnest of mustaches and the air of someone who’s far too good to have to deal with this current bullshit. Not at all dangerous and honestly more in line with what Conrad had expected them all to be.
And to round up the cast, Officer Shyguy, who was almost perfectly positioned to be hidden by Officer Leader’s bulk. Just enough to tell that he was white with brown hair of average height with nothing distinguishing that Conrad could make out in the moment or two he had before Officer Leader was stepping forward with his own hand extended.
“Commissioner Gordan. And we would very much like to ask you a few questions.”
Conrad couldn’t help but laugh as he took the man’s hand in a firm - no stupid alpha grip/pull bullshit gaming to the man’s credit – handshake, “No you’re not.”
Officer Leader had the temerity to arch a single bushy eyebrow, “I’m not?”
Con shook his head, “Look, I’m willing to accept that all this,” he waved a hand back at the dozen or so police cruisers and SUV/tanks with their lights flashing, “is real and happening, but there’s no way the fucking Commissioner of the Gotham Police showed up to Crime Alley so late at night it’s almost morning just because some gangbangers tried to kill a bunch of homeless kids.”
The words were angry and biting, because of course they were, but his voice was light and gently teasing because he was a professional, dammit. And cops, in his experience, were easiest to deal with when they were off-balanced but not feeling threatened. And he deserved some amusement of his own, right? Right.
“And who’s everyone else?” He asked with friendly curiosity. There was a moment of silence, then Not Actually Gordon did that thing where someone was obviously giving a weary sigh, but only mentally, and waved a hand at his side. “Detective Bullock,” Officer McJowls’ scowl deepened a fraction, “Detective Montoya,” Officer Ma’am gave the slightest nod of awknowledgement. “Officers Langdon and Nordholm” Neither made any response, but Officer Smug and Officer Rookie were easily placed, “And most importantly, Captain McFerrell, head of the Bowery’s Juvenile Unit.”
Officer Says He’s The Commissioner seemed to realize that the final member of their group had been hidden behind him the whole time and stepped slightly to the side with a nod back to the man in question. Captain McFerrell looked up from his own notebook and gave a dispassionate nod. A completely bland and average looking man in all ways. Brown hair, light skin, the sort of face where he could grow out a few day’s worth of stubble and be utterly interchangeable with most video game protagonists or The Bachelorette contestants.
That generic blandness was the only reason Conrad didn’t hold it against himself that it took two whole seconds before he clocked the man.
It took Conrad effort – the corners of his eyes wrinkled slightly, his easy smile tightened just the smallest bit – but he bit back any one of a hundred reactions he could’ve had in exchange for giving the man a casual friendly nod. He turned his attention back to Officer “Gordon”, letting his stance stay loose and relaxed, his face friendly and open. “So yeah. No way in hell is anyone having any contact with those kids. Tonight or ever. I’ll be happy to answer whatever questions you wish, but I categorically refuse any contact between the police and the residents of the Center for any reason, with or without chaperones or oversight.”
He finished off with another cheerful smile, eyes not leaving his reflection in “Gordon’s” glasses. It didn’t stop McFerrell from knowing exactly who Con had been directing that statement to, neither did it stop him from taking an honestly overly exaggerated amount of offence to it.
“Now just a minute, kid. This is a serious investigation, and all of those children are material witnesses. You will provide access or you’ll be charged with-“
Angela was opening her mouth in preparation for a counter-argument to his right. Red Robin had stepped forward to his left with a faint furrow between the browlines of his cowl. Not Gordon had turned to his side to more fully look at Captain McFerrell, looking like he too was about to comment, but Conrad beat them all to the punch. “Captain McFerrell, do you have a twin brother?”
If Caleb was there, he would’ve hit the record-scratch button of the makeshift soundboard he usually kept in his pocket. All the eyes turned back to him as McFerrell stuttered while his brain processed the sudden non-sequiter.
“No,” he eventually said, “I don’t. What does that-“
“No twin brother at all? Named Michel, perhaps? Or Mike?” Conrad was trying so hard to keep his tone natural and even, but he could tell a bit of that faux politeness lilt had slipped into it. Detectives’ eyes went from him to McFerrell and back again and he could see the gears turning in those heads.
He could also see the moment it clicked for officer “Just Call Me Mike”. To his credit, the man’s face barely shifted, just a slight widening of the eyes and press of the lips, but the way his face suddenly blanched of all color couldn’t be hidden from the others. It shouldn’t have taken him as long as it did. The lighting was good, and it wasn’t like Conrad was trying to hide himself or anything. Sure, Conrad had a lot more hair back then and had been about a foot shorter and half the weight, still lithe and corded with overly broad shoulders being the only sign of what was to come. But at the same time, “Officer Mike of Traffic Patrol” had spent many afternoons with Con in the back of the man’s cruiser over the years. Recognition should’ve come faster.
Maybe the good Captain was just thrown off because he wasn’t used to seeing Conrad wearing so much clothing at once.
Conrad maintained unblinking eye-contact with “Mike” as the silence began to stretch uncomfortably long. Unasked questions from the rest of the officers swirled and grew thicker with each passing second, the weight of their eyes on the both of them grew heavier. There was the faintest sound of heavy fabric shifting behind him as Red Robin stood up a touch straighter at a sudden realization. McFerrell’s eyes were glued to his and Con knew the officer could read the unspoken threat in his eyes.
“Do not push this. If you do, I will nuke this site from orbit in a heartbeat. Sure, you very likely would weather the storm, but why have to suffer through it at all when you can just let. This. Drop.”
Conrad let the silence last to the point where the uncomfortableness would degrade into demands for an explanation before clapping his hands and flashing another brightly cheery and oblivious smile, “So that’s settled then!” The looks on the police officers’ faces was one he’d treasure always. Like they’d each gotten slapped in the face with a week-dead trout. “What questions can I answer for you, sirs?”
The man who claimed to the Gordon stared at him levelly with an expression Conrad knew well; he wore it often enough himself. The expression that said ‘I recognize that you are fucking with me. I am not impressed with the fact that are fucking with me. But I also have only so many minutes in my life and this is not something I will be wasting any of them on.’
Instead, he flipped open his notebook and jotted a few things down. “Conrad. Last name?”
“Nolastname.” The man who claimed to be the Commissioner looked up at him with bushy eyebrows pulled low. Conrad smiled and pointed at the notebook, “All one word. It’s what the people at the free clinic used to process me, so if I’m in the system at all, it’ll be under that.”
“That yer family name, is it?” Detective McJowls snorted, half to himself.
“Nope!” Conrad replied brightly, “But I got disowned pretty hard. Last time my sperm-doner caught wind I was still using their last name, I got a bullet in the back and spent the night dodging a bunch more.”
Angela whispered something under her breath, and Red Robin was suddenly engrossed in whatever he was typing on his arm. The two Officers exchanged glances while Detective Ma’am glared over at Detective McJowls.
Captain “Mike” was hiding behind “Commissioner” Leader’s back again.
Not!Gordon looked up from his notepad, glanced over Conrad’s shoulder, then back to his face, “And what is your relationship to the Red Hood?”
Con looked back to see the Boss still leaning against one of the larger pieces of rubble, hips casually cocked, and spine a curved line of predatory grace. He even had his arms crossed in the way Con had admitted made his biceps and chest look extra big and flexed. The asshole tease. When he noticed Con and the rest looking at him, he gave a cheeky little wave with his fingers.
Conrad looked back to Officer Leader and gave a little shrug, “Mostly physical.”
Not as many kids had obeyed Angela’s orders to get to bed as it’d first seemed, at least judging from the sudden explosion of theatrically horrified screams, cat-calls, oooooooos and ewwwwwws, cries of disgust, and one particularly loud round of laughter from someone on the top floor. A choked cough and squeak came from behind him. When Conrad glanced, Red Robin was looking as impartial and placid as ever, while Angela had turned away, fist to her mouth and shoulders shaking uncontrollably.
Officer Leader ignore all of it and just made another note in his booklette. “That why he showed up to dig you out?”
Conrad didn’t let his demeanor slip, but it was a close thing. “Fshhh, hardy. Shit went boom and fell down in Crime Alley; of course the Red Hood was going to show up with his excavation crew, that’s just how it works.”
Detective McJowls snorted and rolled his eyes while Detective Ma’am gave him a look of open disbelief.
Conrad could feel his smile frosting over. Then Officer Commissioner looked up with a bushy eyebrow arched dubiously, “So you’re saying he would’ve been out here with a few dozen soldiers and equipment no matter who’d been buried under the street.” The naked disbelief in the man’s voice pushed it all over the edge.
Con’s voice went flat and hard as iron. “Yes. I am.” Commissioner Asshole looked like he was about to say something else, and fuck that. “I am going to excuse your rudeness about this because I realize it’s been over a quarter-century since anyone from the GCPD further out than the Bowery station has bothered to set foot past Vine Lane, but let me spell this out for you all very clearly.”
“Conrad, I really don’t think-“ Angela whispered through clenched teeth as she reached out for his shoulder. He felt faintly bad for ignoring her, but he did. When she tried to tug at his arm, he just didn’t let it bulge. He certainly didn’t stop talking.
“For the last near-30 years, you all in the rest of Gotham have been doing to us what the rest of the country did to Gotham during No Man’s. We don’t have police here, we just have thugs in uniform who roll through when they think there’ll be easy pickings for fines or fucking. We don’t have hospitals, we don’t have emergency rooms, we don’t have first responders, we don’t have the Martha Wayne Foundation, public transportation, bus stops, subway stops, monorail, underrail, the taxi companies don’t come out here, neither do the ambulances. We don’t even get Bats. The only thing we do get is the fire department. Sometimes. When something’s burning hot enough it might spread into the rest of the city.” His glare deepend.
“We’ve been cut off long enough we’ve got kids whose parents weren’t born till after it all went down. For two generations, when shit catches fire, we know the trucks won’t arrive until long after everyone inside has been reduced to bone char. When a building collapses, we know no one’s coming to dig them out. When outsiders want to have some fun knowing they can rape, rob, and kill without having to worry about the cops or the Bats getting called on their ass, they come here. That’s the way it’s always been since longer than I’ve been alive.”
He had not raised his voice. He had kept his words level. Cool, crisp, calm. His Alley accent was coming out stronger than it almost ever did, but his expression barely twitched and his face was calm. He wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t raging. And for some ungodly reason, not one person had tried to interrupt him after Angela. Conrad stood with his arms crossed, keeping a firm grip on his own biceps to keep himself from gesturing or pointing accusing fingers. If this was happening, and he couldn’t see any way of making himself stop, then he was going to be a goddamn fucking professional about it.
“We only have one public service available here in the Alley and it’s called the goddamn Red Hood. When assholes come in looking to raise a little mayhem and get their nut off, it’s the Red Hood and his crew who intercept them and encourage them to be on their way before they can hurt anyone. When shit catches fire, he’s the one who’s going to show up with all the gear and manpower needed to put that shit out before we lose one of the few intact residence blocks we’ve got left. When buildings collapse, the whole gang’s showing up with their industrial equipment and organization to dig out whoever was underneath.
“He funds and supplies our emergency clinics, our food banks, even our fucking schools. He arranges for drivers to be available to get you home safe in the middle of the night. He’s got places set up with space-heaters and supplies so people aren’t freezing to death in the middle of winter. He’s the only reason thousands of us are even still alive, and he’s the only form of organized power that has given a fucking shit about any of us since the day Gotham’s royalty got murdered by some unknown asshole with no brains and even less trigger discipline, and the only person who’s done anything for Crime Alley besides treating us like something you can hit with a stick to make money fall out.
“Go ahead and don’t trust anything else I say, it’s probably not a bad idea, but do not – even for a second – even think about implying I’m lying when I say that the Red Hood would’ve been out here with the same level of manpower even if it had been one of you assholes buried under that street.”
Conrad would’ve jabbed a finger at Commissioner Asshole if he hadn’t had the foresight to keep them gripped in place. “And I get that you don’t like him because he’s out there murdering assholes before they can pay you off to have their charges dropped, but just consider it fair trade for the literal tens of thousands you’ve murdered by turning this place into a fucking hellhole and literal war zone with your purposeful, malicious neglect.”
He wasn’t even out of breath or flush or anything. His eyes had never left the fake Commissioner’s. “You will not be interviewing anyone here. Not tonight, not ever. If you wish, I will be happy to come downtown to give a statement about the events of tonight with a legal advisor at my side. Not today. I have shit that needs to be done, because we all damn well know no one else is showing up to do it. Tomorrow. Eleven o’clock-“
“3pm.” Red Robin stated from behind him. Conrad paused.
“Tomorrow. Three PM. Otherwise, I think you are done here for tonight. We appreciate your rapid response, but you are no longer needed. If you need an escort back to the Bowery station, I’m sure the Red Hood would be happy to arrange you one.”
“Are you threatening us, boy?” Officer Smug really should know better than to use that phrasing. Conrad just gave him a level look.
“Do I look like I’m threatening anyone?” Conrad looked around as he spread his hands open and arms wide, showing off his complete lack of any weaponry whatsoever. “I’m a fucking unarmed kid in torn jeans and a sleeveless jacket against, what, at least thirty cops?” He laughed, something short and giddy, “Do I look like the kind of crazy asshole who’d charge into those sorts of odds? That’d be like me charging into an armed mob of murderously bigoted white supremacists armed with just a piece of wood or something. It’d be like me trying to take on a guy who can throw fire that melts brick with bare-knuckle boxing and headbutts. It’d be like me trying fucking tank an entire bomb and several tons of collapsing roadway because that’s the sort of shit I’d do to make sure no one fucks with the kids under my protection. Do I look like that kind of crazy to you?”
Well. Now he was out of breath. And flush. And had definitely been shouting by the end there.
Not exactly how he’d planned to enact Plan 1 (All Eyes on Conrad), Phase 1, but a good scheme was nothing if not flexible.
The street was quiet for a long moment after that. He could feel the eyes on him. From the six officers in front of him. From the dozen plus officers behind him. From the Center windows above. From the Boss. From Malone. From whoever else was watching through security cameras and chest-cams and live-feeds. No one was moving. The shifting temperatures had crossed another tipping point during his ranting, and the early morning/late night round of light rain had begun. The sizzling of the last fires getting smothered out by the water and the crackle of unattended radios were the only real sounds of note until Officer “Gordon” snapped his notebook shut and clapped his hands.
“Alright, everyone. You heard the man. Finish processing the gang members who’re left and head back to your normal patrols.” The street exploded back into activity like it’d never stopped. Officer Not Gordon spoke under his breath with the Detectives next to him as the rest hurried back to their cars, the strengthening rain giving everyone extra motivation to get on their way.
“Jeeeeesus Christ, Conrad.” Angela sounded like she’d been hit in the stomach with the strain in her voice. “Was any of that necessary?”
Conrad’s lip twisted as he gave it honest consideration. Eventually he turned to her and nodded. “Whatever their response to that turns out to be, I'm almost certain it wont involve pulling any of the Center residents into this bullshit. So yeah, I’m going to say it all was.”
Angela slowly shook her head with a baffled expression, “You are every bit as goddamn crazy as I thought you were at the very start, aren’t you?” Conrad could only shrug. There really was no answer to that. “Well, that’s fine. It’s Gotham. What else are people going to be?” She dug into her purse and handed a card to him. It was heavy and black and had letters and designs engraved on it in silver and gold. He squinted down at it, but the flashing police lights made it too hard to decipher the thin lettering.
“The card for my father’s firm. In case you need representation.” Conrad started to try and say something, but apparently it was his turn to get talked over tonight. Which, honestly, was only fair by this point. “I mean, I’ve never heard of your boyfriend getting charged with anything, so I’m sure he’s got some excellent lawyers on call and all,” her head did not shift an iota towards the Boss while she said that, but her cheeks turned pink even as she kept her eyes resolutely forward, “but if not, I’m the only one of my siblings who’s never had to call him up for bail or for a rep, so he owes me at least one.”
Conrad just blinked at that and he looked down at her, “And you’d blow that on this?”
Angela stood up to her full height and shoved a finger into the middle of his chest, “I spent tonight with half a dozen street kids barely two-thirds my age armed with automatic handguns and rifles, who were ready to lay down their lives to keep me safe. And I’ve only worked here like two weeks, I don’t even know any of their names! There is nothing I can do to pay something like that back, but I can at least do this.” Her expression darkened and Conrad could swear she should’ve been flashing fangs along with her teeth, “And if daddy’s firm tries to take on any of those utter… soulless monsters as clients, I will not give him a moment’s peace until they’re all dropped. He will not be another weapon to be wielded by the people who tried to f’ing kill me!”
It was like watching a tiny chipmunk swear an oath of bloody vengeance. And knowing full well that it would fulfill it too. Conrad put the card into one of his inner pockets and gave Angela a firm – but nonbruising - clasp on the arm. “Thank you. Honestly. I have been living in or working in shelters for almost a decade and I promise you I have never experienced a night that was anything near this level before. I hope you don’t quit over this; I think you could march these kids into hell after tonight.”
Angela rolled her eyes and scoffed, “Oh please. If a few dozen thugs with heavy weapons was enough to scare me off of something, I wouldn’t have been fulfilling my extracurriculars anywhere near here in the first place. But, um. Thanks.” She suddenly realized she still had her finger against his chest and yanked it back like it burned.
“So!” she chirped, “I need to get in and actually get all those heavily armed delinquents to bed. And collect the weapons. I’ll put them all in the main office with the door locked for whoever on the next shift is cleared for them!” And then she was off, racing to get out from the rain as fast as she could before he could say anything further.
Conrad watched her go with a fond smile. He really hoped he’d never gotten railed by her dad in the past. She should have a better father than that.
Speaking of… He tracked Captain “Mike” as the man made his way to his vehicle.
It was the same. Fucking. Cruiser. Jesus fucking dammit.
“I take it you and Captain McFerrell have a history.” Oh right, and apparently Commissioner Asshole hadn’t bailed with everyone else. Conrad turned to… not glare. That would be unnecessarily rude, and there’s a thin line between “being abrasive enough to become the primary focus of an investigation” and “being abrasive enough to have earned a ride unsecured in the back of a transport that'll be swinging back and forth until you’re bludgeoned to death from bouncing off the walls”.
“Batman trusts him.” Despite the fact that Conrad had turned at least half a dozen times in the last few minutes, Red Robin managed to still be hovering just over his shoulder, distractedly typing away as images flashed across the miniature screen attached to his gauntlet. He looked up to meet Con’s eyes, “I trust him. Hood trusts him.”
“And you trust him?” The Not Gordon asked Red Robin who nodded in response.
“With my life.” It was said with the same even tone as everything else despite the fact it left Conrad reeling and feeling lightly stunned. The vigilante glanced up at him and gave a tilt of his head that managed to perfectly convey a silent ‘What? It’s true.’
He looked back to the Commissioner. Who… Wh was probably actually really Commissioner Gordon after all. Fucking hell. Just.. Fuck this. Fuck his life.
There’d been a question, hadn't there? One that’d uncork a whole storm of shit if he answered it honestly.
…You know what? Fuck it.
“He was a regular of mine back when I was a hustler.” Conrad admitted in a low even tone of voice. “Two, three times a month he’d pick me up in his cruiser and we’d spend an hour or so in the back.” Conrad glanced over to the Commissioner. The man was struggling to maintain his stoicism, but the way his mustache was bristling promised pain for someone. “He said his name was Mike and he worked in Traffic Patrol. He was one of my biggest repeat clients from when I was 13 to about mid-15. Then one day he said I was getting too old for him, gave me a few thousand extra as a final tip, and then ignored me whenever we crossed paths afterwards.”
The Commissioner made a sound halfway between a groan and a heavy sigh. For almost a minute, he stood in the rain looking like a wet dog and looked out across the collapse stretch of roadway in silence before drawing himself back up, “How long ago was this?”
Conrad gave a tight sympathetic smile, “Started eight years ago, ended five years ago.”
“Jesus fucking christ.” Gordan whispered under his breath. Conrad was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to have heard that.
“Sorry, boss.” Because he honestly was. Commissioner Gordon… Well, ACAB and all, solidarity, but Conrad remembered when Gordon was promoted to the head of the GCPD. The whole clan had lost their collective shit. Dad bemoaned the sudden uptick in bribe costs because officers were suddenly getting squirrely about doing business. His mom chucked half a dining set through various windows after her fifth informant got purged from the ranks. Cousin Livia even tried taking a few shots at the new Commissioner to bring him down and spent the rest of the year in traction after the Bat got ahold of her.
Anyone who pissed his family off that much deserved at least a smidge of respect.
“If I’d known he was involved with Juvie – fuck, headed Juvie – I would’ve gotten his ass reported years ago.” It was… Well, not untrue. You could report someone after they'd died or vanished mysteriously, right?
“Get whose ass reported, gordo?” Fred’s arm slung around his shoulder out of nowhere, and Con resisted the urge to just collapse back into it. Gordon drew himself up but didn’t otherwise react to having one of the GCPD’s most wanted standing five feet from him.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it, Boss. It’s getting taken care of.” Conrad patted Fred on the chest comfortingly.
“Damn right it is.” The Commissioner glowered at where Captain Not Mike’s car was pulling away and into the night. Then he sighed and nodded his head to Red Robin. “Red.” To Hood, “Red”, and to Conrad, “Mr. Nolastname. We’ll be seeing you in two days, then. Central.”
“Absolutely, sir.”
The man grunted something and stalked off with the air of someone who really really wanted something they could punch or throw into a wall. Con pittied whatever coffee cup wound up in his hands next.
00ooOoo00
He and the Boss watched him till he was a fair distance away, then Hood turned to look at him. “So who’re we killing?”
Conrad groaned and ran a hand down his face, “Turns out one of my old regulars wasn’t a traffic cop like he said but is actually the head of the Bowery’s Juvie Department.”
Red Hood stilled, then snarled, “That fucking…”
He started to reach for a gun before Conrad grabbed him by the wrist, “Oh no. Commissioner gets a week to take care of it. And if he doesn’t, that asshole’s mine. My fuckup, my kill.”
“Hood, could you please stop your underlings from premeditating murder where I can hear them?” Red Robin sounded almost amused under the carefully controlled tones.
Conrad waved him off as he let himself sag against the Boss’ chest and draped arm. “Ignore me. I’m worn the fuck out. Never fought an insane mage before. Never been buried alive before. Never got to tell the Commissioner of the entire fucking Gotham police force that he’s an asshole to his face before. It’s been a long fucking night.”
Hood made a sympathetic noise and draped his second arm over Con’s shoulder, loosely hugging him from behind and letting him use the Boss’ chest as a headrest to lean back against. He then took a few steps back until he'd pulled Con under the rainshadow formed from the various decorative brickworks sticking out from the Center. Con was just starting to get comfortable when Hood rumbled in his chest.
“Oh hey, it’s your newest fanboy. Sup, Yellow-Eyes?”
Conrad opened his eyes (he didn’t even remember closing them) and saw Zachery quickly stepping over and around bits of rubble and bullet casings as he hurried towards them. The boy let out a surprised yelp when Conrad leaned forward as far as Fred’s arms would let him and grabbed him in for a tight hug. "Shit, I’m so glad you’re okay. You never should've had to deal with that crap in the tunnels.”
“Oh! Yeah! Okay! No, sure!” Zachery went stiff as a board at the embrace, but Con still had to maintain it for a few seconds before he could make himself let go, at which point the kid took a couple of hurried steps back. “It’s no problem, like, not like anyone could’ve predicted we’d get zerg rushed by assholes tonight, right?”
The kid’s eyes kept darting between Con’s face, then up to Hood’s helmet and back like he expected the gang boss to drop kick him for getting hugged by the guy’s… whatever they were.
Downsides of dating a crime lord. It unnecessarily intimidates everyone else you might want to be casually physical with. Noted.
“No, I mean yeah, that sucked, but I was mainly apologizing for you guys having to dig out whatever was left of Balefire and thinking it was me. Nails was telling me about it while they were excavating me, and it didn’t sound pretty.”
“Oh! That, no. I mean. Yeah, that was…” Zach rubbed his arms nervously and shrugged, “That wasn’t fun. But. I mean, shit. When you went running down into the tunnels, I fucking screamed, man.”
Conrad winced and let his head thump back against the Boss’ chest. “Yeah. I really did think I could catch up to him before he reached that fucking bomb, but… I blame that freaky fucking creepypasta-ass un-green candle. It burned out everything that was keeping me going when it set me on fire, I got no other way to describe it.”
Fred started. “Wait, you caught fire?”
“Wait, that was what was in his hand? A candle? Seriously?” Zach look almost offended, and Conrad was right there with him.
“A fucking candle.” Con confirmed, “Stumpy ugly little thing burning with that same cursed color. It’s a fucking insult we almost all got killed by it.”
“Wait.” Red Robin’s voice was suddenly sharp and focused and Conrad looked over to find himself pierced by the vigilante’s stare. “This candle. Describe it.”
Con felt a sliver of unease slide up his spine, but he pushed forward regardless, “It was just a weird candle-stub. It was about, uh,” He held up a thumb on one hand and the index finger of the other, considering their lengths before flexing the index finger, “About this long. Wider than you could get your fingers around, but the whole thing looked like it was made of wax drippings. Like, those old timey candles always have the wax running down them and everything, but it didn’t look like there was ever a solid core to this. It was just dripping wax all the way in. And it was burning with that weird not-green flame.”
Red Robin was typing rapidly away on his gauntlet screen, flicking through screens. “Just a candle? No holder? Gold, carved like art-deco flames?”
Conrad blinked and felt his blood run cold for a second. “Uh. No. Just the candle itself. But that sort of sounds like the mask the guy was wearing. It was like one of those theater masks, the smiling ones, made out of these angular flames. And gold. Or golden colored, at least. It didn’t feel like gold when getting headbutted by it.” Or headbutting it, but if no one was close enough to have seen that brilliant decision, he was never going to bring it up.
Red Robin just cursed and pulled up a final image before bending his arm to show Conrad the screen. “Does this look at all familiar?”
Conrad leaned in, then flinched. Because it did. It looked very familiar.
Not the candlestick holder part - three spirals of stylized flames that bore more than a little resemblance to Balefire’s mask - but the candle itself? Yeah. Just a mass of melted wax on melted wax with a long unlit wick sticking out the top.
“Yeah… Yeah, that looks like the same fucking candle. But it’s the same length as the one I pulled away from him. I thought those things, you know.. melted when you used them? Shrunk down pretty quick.” There was a lot of text around the image too, part of whatever source it’d been taken from. There was “Drake Antiquities Collection Item #34UB-09 Tri-Spiral Candlestick & Candle.” in old school typewriter font across the plate itself. Then “Case-230711 – Item of Interest 004” on the bottom in handwriting so neat it might as well be typeset.
He’d normally just let details like that pass through his mind without sticking, but not in this case. He hated that fucking candle. Whatever clue he had to the source of - “You saw the Not-Green too?” Zachery broke in without warning. He was nearly vibrating with intensity. His wide brown eyes were looking Conrad over like he’d never seen him before, like they were trying to see through and around and into him.
Slowly, Conrad nodded. “Yeah?”
Zachery winced and looked aside for a moment before looking back. “Like. Um. How would you- How would you describe it?”
Conrad felt a crawling itch against the back of his mind remembering, “It was like if green had gotten sick. All decaying rot and hospitals that’d been left to molder away for ages and-“
“the weird slime that grows in long abandoned sewers where something had died.” Zachery finished up along with him word for word.
They stared at each other in silence for a long moment. Neither one wanting to be the first to say something.
“Well fuck, babe. That was creepy as hell.” Hood tried to keep his tone light, but he wasn’t succeeding.
Conrad could no longer suppress the shiver that ran down his spine. “Fuck, shit, that’s so not cool. I knew that fucking thing was watching back.”
“You picked that up too?” Zachery looked Conrad over like he was seeing him for the first time, not a hint of sexuality questioning related blushing or awkwardness to be found. Whatever he saw made him hunch up his shoulders and lean in, biting his lower lip. “So, here’s the thing, C. No one else was seeing that shit. When I tried to talk about the not-green, everyone else looked at me like I was crazy.” He paused, then in a low whisper, “Are you magic or something? Meta, maybe?”
Conrad would’ve snorted at the question if it wasn’t for how seriously Zach asked it. Instead, he considered it, and the boy, seriously. “Between clinic screening and pre-employment tests, I’ve been checked for the Meta-gene five times now and it’s always come back negative.” He glanced around. They were too quiet to get picked up from anyone inside the Center. Red Robin had stepped away and was cursing to himself as he typed away on his keyboard. And the Boss… Well, was right here. But Zach couldn’t have missed that fact, and if he was comfortable with all this right in front of him, then Conrad wouldn’t second guess him. “If I’m magic, no one’s ever bothered to tell me.” He looked back to Zach and frowned, “Why would-“
But before he could even ask why Zachery would think he was, the answer came to him, like dozens of pieces tumbling, sliding, and slotting into place in a rapid-fire cascade. The whispered conversations with Matches, the various asides and awkward glances away and timidness that Conrad normally only saw in kids who’d been closeted a long time and didn’t trust themselves to do or say anything without double-checking every step to make sure they weren’t letting something slip. Which was odd from a kid who’d said he was ‘just questioning, at most’. But not at all odd for a kid who’s step-dad might’ve already had reasons to be on the verge of kicking him out, all of which added up to:
“Oh. Well fuck. I guess that means you couldn't have been able to teach my cousin how you pulled off all that fancy shit with his lasers, huh?”
Zach was already flinching back before Con’s mind caught up with his mouth. “Shit! No, wait, you don’t even gotta answer any of that. Forget I even said it. Fuck, sorry. Party Foul.” He winced and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Beyond fucking rude of me.”
“No, that’s… I was gonna work up to it, you just sort of did an end run around me, I guess.” Zachery chuckled awkwardly.
Con took a deep breath and organized his thoughts. “You were surprised I could see the not-green because you thought only you could see it, and you thought you could see it because you’re magic, which is why you asked if I was too.” Con summarized in a rush, letting Fred’s steel girder arms keep him grounded even as he processed the implications.
Zach winced and gave a little see-saw of his hand. “I mean, it’s kind of unclear what the meta vs magic balance is, but something like that, yeah.”
Conrad blew a puff of air upwards to bounce locks he hadn't possessed for over two years, “And here I’d been planning on seeing if you'd be willing to teach Caleb whatever weird prism and mirror tricks you must've been using to pull off all those crazy maneuvers. That's a pisser; it would've been a way less destructive birthday present than the shit he's usually asking for." Con's eyes snapped back open as realization struck. "Oh shit! I need to get that back from you or he's gonna eviscerate me when I get home!"
“Um.” Zach shuffled guiltily, “So, Robin showed up and insisted on bringing it back himself?” Conrad gave him a blank look, the silent ‘what’ written across his face. “Man, I don’t know how he knew about it or how he knew where you lived. He just said it was on his way back to his patrol rout and he insisted on being the one who delivered it. I wasn’t going to tell him no, that kid has a sword.”
Conrad groaned to himself and looked up at the underside of the Boss’ helmet. “What’re the chances Robin’s just going to drop it off on a windowsill and bail without going all drama-ninja on anyone?”
Fred’s loose embrace tightened for a second before he lifted one arm to tap at the side of his helm. “He’s been told to keep his coms on so we can listen in and make sure he’s keeping himself behaved. I’m about 65% sure this is his way of apologizing for trying to split you open earlier. And to be a creeper in a more socially acceptable way than the big bad Bat’s been doing. 99% on that one.”
Conrad hmm’d softly as he looked over to where he’d seen Robin last. The kid was definitely gone. There was just Red Robin left, now. And Matches. Who was talking with him. For some reason.
That back of the brain churning was getting dangerously close to finishing whatever it’d been processing nearly all evening, but another thought solidified first and Con’s eyes flicked back to Zachery.
“You’re gonna be okay with Malone, right? With the whole… thing?”
Zach looked momentarily confused before brightening, “Oh, shit man, no, yeah. That’s totally fine. Gucci, even! He’s known for like, ages. He’s fine with it, he’s not gonna freak out about it, he’s not gonna be using me for my powers, or any of that kinda shit. Like, he’s completely cool about all of it!”
Conrad nodded and let out a soft sigh of relief. “I figured, but I’m learning I really gotta stop assuming I’ve got a good read on people when me fucking it up is gonna blow back on people other than just myself.”
Fred snorted and shook his head slightly, “That’s just happened once, gordo. Ten minutes ago, no less.”
“One time is still too many.”
“Alright, sonny.” Malone was back, all the earlier tension bled out and back to his swaggering, rumblingly accented self.
Conrad was struck by the thought he had the Boss pressed up behind him and Matches in front of him and his hindbrain was about to explore that concept more fully before it suddenly recoiled from it with a sense of innate wrongness.
Weird.
“We need to get our move on. It’s still a school night ‘n we need to get you home.”
“A- What? Are you kidding? You cannot be serious, Uncle Baloney! Do you know how long I’ve been up for?” Zachery looked aghast as Malone took him by the shoulder and started swinging him around.
The towering man waved over his shoulder, “Thanks again for keeping my boys safe, kiddo. We’ll be seeing ya around.”
Hood snorted with a muttered, “I just bet you will.” while Conrad gave a little wave goodbye. The Boss had started moving too, pushing Con ahead of him as they headed towards where his custom red and black motorcycle was parked by one of the side alleys beyond the road collapse. The street lights beyond illumined Malone in a sharp silhouette as he stalked away through the rain, trenchcoat billowing dramatically behind him as Zachery scrambled to keep up, gesturing animatedly as he described some event of the evening or another.
The shit in the back of his mind was exerting an almost physical pressure, if he could just-
“I appreciate your assistance tonight.” Red Robin had materialized at their sides at some point without Conrad noticing.
Con would’ve flinched if he wasn’t fading so hard. He did furrow his brow in confusion, though. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line? I mean, that is my line. Thank you for your help tonight. To Robin too, when you see him.” He fingers-napped as he suddenly remembered something he'd thought of ages ago at the start of the night. “You’re going to see the Batman soon, aren’t you?”
Red Robin’s head stilled at a slight angle for a moment before he nodded, “Most likely before we close out the night, yes. Why?”
“You,” Con pointed at the vigilante with one hand while his other kept a grip on Fred’s arm, getting guided forward like a fussy tired child. Which is what he was starting to feel like. “You need to tell him that my room is a converted walk-in closet with no windows and the only thing he’s accomplishing by trying to spy on me is freaking out the gremlins. I am going to go nuclear if any of my kids winds up going Rogue from the stress. I’m already having to confiscate shit. He needs to knock it off before someone starts putting in real effort towards a death ray.”
Red Robin’s façade cracked long enough to let a laugh escape. An honest one, sharp and lively and young. It made Con grin a little. Proof there was a kid underneath and vigilante-mode wasn’t all there was. Then he glanced over, just for the briefest of moments, towards the the alleyway the Malones had vanished down. “I’ll be sure to tell him.”
Conrad glanced over at the same alleyway, wondering what Red Robin had seen to make him-
Malone stalking away dramatically, trench coat billowing behind him, shoulders broad and squared, a younger figure beside him, energetic and excited, just silhouettes with no detail.
“… No. "
The Boss standing perfectly still and rigid against his desk, not even moving when he broke the silence to speak.
Malone sitting perfectly still and rigid at the table, not even moving when he broke the silence to speak.
“That fucking…”
The Boss’ voice when irate and trying to hold it back overlaid with Malone’s voice when irate and trying to hold it back, the only difference in intonation coming from the vocoder scrambling.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Hey, Radd? You okay there?”
The dark storming aura of looming menace that leaked out from under the cheerful swaggering Matches act, the way his voice would drop into something stern and commanding and focused.
“I am going to fucking kill him.”
“Radd? Babe? Where’re you going?”
“Did I say something wrong?”
The insane amount of muscle on the man, far more than any mob boss should ever need unless he spent every night throwing around gang members and every inch covered with scars of every type imaginable.
The fire escape clattered noisily as Conrad sprinted up it, snarling under his breath every step of the way.
The flinch every time guns got brought up. The scowling at arming kids, the wincing every time a child showed they knew how to use a firearm, the storming disapproval throughout the entire process of sorting through the caches.
“If this is what I think it is, I am going to be laughing at all of you, I want you to know that.”
A heavy sigh.
Beating him in a foot race in dress shoes, then swinging around 170 pounds of teenager like it was nothing.
Showing up unheard behind him again and again and again
Every weird reaction to comments about dealing with the Bat. Every weird reaction to talking about the Boss. His questions about the motivations and thoughts of the Red Hood. His reaction to learning just how people were escaping from Blackgate so easily.
The crunch of Conrad’s feet hitting the grit of the apartment complex roof, then the steady rhythm of boots as he raced to the far end of the building.
Every bit of weirdness between Malone and the Boss. Their interactions laced with an undercurrent that made no sense between two rival mob bosses but fit perfectly for an estranged parent and their kid warily circling each other.
Conrad hit the far side of the roof, but the rain blurred out the details of anything more than a few blocks away. If anyone was still lurking nearby, he couldn't spotthem. That didn’t stop him from leaning over the edge and shouting into the night, “You’re a fucking ASSHOLE, Malone!”
Fred nearly collapsed against the wall next to him, bent over from laughing while running, his helmet off and tears running down his cheeks, “Holy shit, Radd, what the hell?”
“What do you mean, what the hell? You know exactly what the hell!” Con shouted, gesturing wildly towards the Boss and the night both. “That fucking stalking, gaslighting, sonnova bitch! Spent the entire night wheedling information in bits and pieces like he couldn’t have just fucking asked if he fessed up instead, like the goddam creeper he is!”
“Who, Radd. Who are you talking about?” Fred knew exactly who he was talking about, judging by the fact he couldn’t stop laughing and was also trying to oh-so-casually point the interior of his helmet towards him. The interior where his com pickup was.
Conrad turned fully to him with duel middle fingers on display, “You damn well know who I’m talking about! Matches Malone! The Phantom of the Gotham Underworld! Your fucking idiot of a dad! The man who stole my gun!” He leaned in towards the Boss' helmet and made sure to shout directly into it for the finish. “The Goddamn FUCKING Batman!”
~End~
Notes:
Conrad: "Aww, Fred's here to offer physical and moral support. I really do appreciate having something big and broad I can relax against. He's such a good boyf//// Boss With Benifits."
Jason: "Hey Bat. This? This here is mine. You no touchie. I see you looking at him, old man. I was here first. I am claiming dominance. You had your chance. -Mine-!"
Content Warnings:
* Low Key Violence
* The background radiation of the knowledge that police are the weapon of the elite against the underclass and just having to account for that when trying to survive.
* Did I mention Conrad had been an underaged sexworker? Because that's going to be A Thing this chapter.
* ACAB, except for very specific fictional characters.
* All the background themes of the last nine chapters continue.========
Well, there's gonna be an Epilogue for some Outsider POVs on the events of the night, but after that it's time for a few Side Stories and beginning work on what everyone's been waiting for: "The Crime Alley Kid Meets Jason Todd"!
Chapter 11: Epilogue: Conrad is Trending on leX.com (Formally Known as Twitter)
Summary:
RedH – [-ou damn well know who I’m talking about! Matches Malone! The Phantom of the Gotham Underworld!]
Sign – I never heard that one before. Is that a new one?
RedH – [Your fucking idiot of a dad! The man who stole my gun!]
Nigh – Wait, ‘dad’?
(overlapping) Spoi – Uh oh…
(overlapping) Orac – Please don’t tell me-
RedH – (volume increases) The Goddamn FUCKING Batman!
(Untranscribable overlapping of Multiple Speakers, continues for eight seconds)*************
The Batfam react to Conrad.
Gotham reacts to Conrad.
leX.com (formally known as Twitter) reacts to Conrad.
Conrad is asleep.
Or at least in a bed.
He'll be sleeping eventually.
Once Jason's done with him.
Notes:
And that's a wrap!
And to think, this was meant to be a short to moderate length thingy, and now it's longer than most shit they make you read in highschool. Go you, reading a whole The Catcher in the Rye worth of Himbo Homo Henchbros!
No Content Warnings for this chapter aside from the usual "referencing all the fucked up shit that happened in the previous 10 chapters" and "people swearing and referencing sex as a thing that exists without being explicit".
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
BatCom Audio Channel 1 :: 2X/11/7 :: 03:22 – 03:43
[Designates dialog that is not directed at coms but is still picked up]
{{Designates ambient noise/external dialog that was picked up by coms unintentionally}}
Robi – Hood. I have developed a rudimentary regimen of physical training and foundational combat techniques for your concubine to follow so that he might be ready for proper tutelage in one month’s time.
RedH – Awww, I love you too, Little Rob.
Robi – This is not a jest, Hood. I will not see you impaired by the distraction of having to constantly protect your emotional support human. It’s bad enough to have The Drake constantly flitting about after his, we can’t have someone actually competent suffering the same encumbrance.
RedRo – (I swear, I’m gonna tell the Flashes that the next time one of them fucks with the timeline they better make sure the three weeks I went by that gets retconned out in the process.)
Spoi – I guess Hunk-Hench made a positive impression, huh?
RedRo – [I appreciate your assistance tonight]
Robi – He demonstrated a passable grasp of the bare minimum required to be a somewhat competent combatant. He might even be able to survive the first day under grandfather’s tutelage.
Spoi - *low whistle* That sounds like Robin-speak for crushing to me.
Robi - *tt* The weapons-crafter has arrived, I am going off coms.
Batm – Robin-
Robi - I will not do anything which would upset the family threaten the Hood’s relationship with his caretaker, as that would unbalance his current emotional equilibrium. I am not a fool. *click*
RedR – [Most likely before we close out the night, yes. Why?]
RedH – Well I appreciate that, Baby R- aaaand he’s gone.
Batm – Hnnn.
Sign – C actually did pretty good out there. I’m surprised he managed all that without killing anyone in the process.
Batm – He expressed a desire to adhere to Red Hood’s ‘no killing’ truce with us. Said he knew it didn’t apply to him, but seemed to feel it’d be a violation of the spirit of it if he did.
RedR – [I’ll be sure to tell him.]
Blac – Good.
Nigh – Damn, that’s some proactive loyalty you got yourself there, Big Red. When do we get to meet him, anyways? I’ve been collecting embarrassing pictures of you as a kid in preparation.
RedH – {{….fucking…}}
RedH – [Hey Radd? You okay there?]
RedH – {{…ing kill…}}
RedH – [Radd? Babe? Where’re you going?]
RedR – [Did I say something wrong?]
Spoi – Uh, everything okay over there, guys?
RedR – I’m not sure. Conrad just started swearing out of nowhere and is running off down the alley Malone left through. Hood’s following him.
RedH - *laughter* Oh god, please tell me that this is what I think it is.
Batm – Hood, report. What is happening.
RedH – Two for two not my fault, suckers! {{*Grappling hook sound*}}
Orac – I’ve got a track on him. He’s following Malone’s rout out- No, wait. He’s going up the side of a building, now.
RedH – If this is what I think it is, I am going to be laughing at all of you. I want you to know that.
RedR - *heavy sigh*
RedH – {{sounds of his helmet being disengaged}} {{ambient city noise increases}}
RedH – [You’re a fucking ASSHOLE, Malone!]
Spoi – Uh-ho. What’d you do to him, B?
RedH – [*laughter* Holy shit, Radd, what the hell?]
RedH – [What do you mean, what the hell? You know exactly what the hell!]
RedR – I’ve reached the building they’re on top of. Staying here for the moment in case my presence exacerbates whatever this situation is.
RedH – [That fucking stalking, gaslighting, sonnova bitch! Spent the entire night wheedling information in bits and-] … [-have just fucking asked if he fessed up instead, like the goddam creeper he is!]
Nigh – Aww, he’s already complaining about B like one of us, too!
RedH – [Who, Radd? Who are you talking about?]
RedH – [-ou damn well know who I’m talking about! Matches Malone! The Phantom of the Gotham Underworld!]
Sign – I never heard that one before. Is that a new one?
RedH – [Your fucking idiot of a dad! The man who stole my gun!]
Nigh – Wait, ‘dad’?
(overlapping) Spoi – Uh oh…
(overlapping) Orac – Please don’t tell me-
RedH – (volume increases) The Goddamn FUCKING Batman!
(Untranscribable overlapping of Multiple Speakers, continues for eight seconds)
(Understandable vocal fragments transcribed below)
RedH - *laughter*
Unknown (multiple) – *wordless screaming*
Spoi - -YYYYY GOOOOOO-
Nigh – -the hell did-
RedH - *laughter continues*
Sign – -e’s not wrong or-
Unknown - *rhythmic impact noises*
RedR - *laughter*
RedH - *laughter continues*
RedH – [-too dramatic a bastard to not sweep away-]
(All coms except Orac and RedH cut off)
Orac – Alright, everyone gets a ten second timeout to get their shit together.
RedH – [Oh my fucking god, I had the goddam Batman over for dinner at my place. Multiple times! What the shit, Boss?]
RedH – [*laughter* Babe, I didn’t get grabbed by him until years after that, don’t look at me for answers.]
RedH – [Dad would rant and spit about the Bat tearing through Two-Face’s operations, and they’d put heads together and try to work out plans to get around him and he was the fucking Bat the whole time, that is fucked up!]
(Coms click back on)
Spoi - *laughter*
Nigh – Wait, was that really what you were doing when you were off as Matches back then?
Batm – Malone had been part of Two-Face’s gang when I took over the identity. It would’ve been suspicious for me to suddenly change my behavior.
Nigh – So that’s a yes.
RedH – [I am going to go fucking crazy. Oh.. Oh fuck me. Zach’s Signal, isn’t he? That’s why he was able to blind half the Skullz from the rooftop, he’s the goddamn fucking Signal!]
Batm - *hnnnnng*
Sign – Okay, but he only figured that out because he figured out you were Batman. He didn’t have a suspicion before then.
RedH – [Has he always been able to do that? I’ve never heard of the Signal doing that. I never would’ve even- Does he have a whole extra expression of his powers he saves for Family work? Or what? I-*sounds of frustration*]
Sign – See? Totally fine.
Spoi - *still laughing* Okay, okay. I have to know how. What did B do? Pretty sure it wasn’t a fancy backflip this time.
RedH – [Radd, chico. Tio. What clued you in? This is very important so we know exactly what to make fun of him for.]
RedH – [That fucking whoosh of the trenchcoat when he turned to walk away. It’s the same goddamn overly dramatic sweep he always does with the cape! He totally pulled that same move-]
(Multiple) - *laughing*
Robi – *click* I have successfully forged the beginnings of a non-acrimonious partnership with- Why is everyone laughing?
BatM - *hnnnnnnng*
(Multiple) - *laughing continues*
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
~0030
In An Alley World @AlleyGal08
The hell is this? Does Red Hood have his own signal, now? #TheHoodSignal
[Image Alt: Picture taken through an apartment window over a length of city blocks. Approximately five blocks distant, multiple laser lights have formed the shape of a red helmet hovering in midair over a section of street lit up with a bright red light]
In An Alley World @AlleyGal08
Holy crap, I think it was!
[Image Alt: Picture taken through an apartment window over a length of city blocks. Approximately five blocks distant, a street is brightly lit with a white light, illuminating several dozen individuals on the street with multiple bikes. A red circle has been drawn around one figure with a red head, though the poor resolution prevents any detail beyond that from being seen]
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
~01:30
Crime Alley Citizens Watch @CrimeAlleyWatch
That makes five people in the last ten minutes telling us that they’ve seen a convoy of multiple police vehicles and prisoner vans making their way through Crime Alley at a high rate of speed. Further details unknown. Keep safe.
That’s Mister Street Rat to You @templeton903
Oh shit.
In An Alley World @AlleyGal08
The hell? That’s not good, is it?
Thanks-Shiving- @ScullinSkull
RIP whoever got that called in on them. I foresee a whole lot of ‘while resisting arrest’ shootings going down tonight.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
~02:30
Crime Alley Defiant @jkpaldio
Flashing lights woke me up. Look out my window and see -this-. I have no fucking clue. #OnlyInGotham #WTFGotham #PDInCrimeAlley
[Video Alt: Unsteady cellphone footage from a block away of what appears to be a standoff between GCPD and an unknown street gang. The gang is blocking the police from accessing a strip of collapsed roadway while an industrial-sized drone lifts away pieces of luggage. The scene is illuminated by a bright white light off-camera and multiple police-lights]
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
~03:30
Throwing Shade @Shades_of_the_Hood
Looking pretty. Engaged in Search & Rescue. Might delete later. IDK. #GlamLife #ParkRowInfluencer #Blessed
[Image Alt: A slim person in a motorcycle helmet with a black reflective faceguard takes a selfie while making a peace sign. The arm holding out the camera is visible in the reflection. Behind the figure, a makeshift crane has been set up around what looks like a collapse. Multiple figures are clustered around the rubble looking down]
Scott Reactts @scot_reacts_real
Shouldn’t you be leaving that to the professionals?
Throwing Shade @Shades_of_the_Hood
Do I not look like a professional?
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
~4:30
KimBiArry @Bi_Mess_Kimberly
So, my friend was up late/early watching random TikToks and sent me this random ‘woman yells at cops’ video like I’d gaf about that, but -this- was in the background and oh my god my heart.
#RedHood #CapeWatch #HoYay?
[Image Alt: The goddam Red Hood is standing in the middle of a bunch of police and heavily armed folks in the middle of the street non-platonically hugging the shit out of a big beefy boy like it’s the end of a Hallmark Christmas Special]
Red Realist Historian @anthoherr03
Don’t do that to. These are real people. They don’t need you getting all weird about whatever street/gang culture thing this is.
KimBiArry @Bi_Mess_Kimberly
Babe, there aint no hetero explanation for the shit I’m seeing.
Throwing Shade @Shades_of_the_Hood
You can tell who is Crime Alley or at least CA-adjacent vs everyone else by how surprised they are to see Red Hook macking with another guy.
I mean, you can’t hardly blame him. I’m not into men, but even I would be tempted to snuggle on that particular Crime Alley kid.
Himbo Admiration @himboheadquarters
Agreed. Hood’s got himself some unbelievable quality of arm candy. #ThatCrimeAlleyKid
[Image Alt: Seriously, look at those arms]
[Image Alt: Open jacket, too? Sir, you spoil us!]
[Image Alt: Those aren’t pecs, those are my new pillows!]
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
~0500
Vote for BoCT for Webbies ’23! @BestofCapeTok
Whooooooaaaaaah! Have you all seen this video??! #Gotham #OnlyInGotham #WTFGotham #Robin #RobinFight #RobinVsRando
[Video Alt: robin_swordfight_random_unarmeddude.mp4]
lifes punchline @wonderwomansthighs
Robin: FIGHT ME, HEATHEN!
#ThisCrimeAlleyKid: *yeets an entire Robin across the street*
Robin: Fair enough, good sir. I bid you adieu.
Dark Samsong PDK @jerrdmissia7
Wait. Isn’t that ambulance lineup they’re fighting in front of the same one from that video of the fucking #SkullNazi talking about how he’s going to burn LGBTQ+ people?
Now on Clearskies @goodbyedoggie
Oh snap, it is! I think that dude Robin’s trying to get to disarm him is the same one #SkullNazi was yelling at too!
Why you attacking #ThatCrimeAlleyKid, Robin??
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
~0530
Nickie Draws <18 DNI @NickieDraws
Okay, could someone just send me a link to this “Skull Nazi Rant” thing everyone keeps talking about? I feel like I’m missing out on some critical context or something.
Roy Parker @HonoraryBronteBrother
I got ya. White Supremacist Vows to Come Back and ‘Burn You All’
Nickie Draws <18 DNI @NickieDraws
Holy fuck, I thought people were exaggerating but that’s even worse than I thought it’d be!
Lovely Rita @2boys1mom
What in the world??
Laddie of the Lake @carrottopped99
Okay, I know the videotape is horrifying, 100%, absolutely, but I am in love with that dumb stupid Golden Shepard of a boy who totally thought he’d made a new friend from beating each other up and is all :( :( :( when skullface responds with pissing on his corpse.
Himbo Admiration @himboheadquarters
Big of Bicep, Large of Heart, Small of Brain.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
~0600
Gotham Gazette @GothamGazette
Late Night Assault by Roving Crime Alley Gangs Leaves Children of Gotham’s Elite Hospitalized With One Missing
No Relation to Doctor Isley @BetterThanTikTok
“A Bunch of Fascist Rich Kids Went to Commit a Mass Murder Hate Crime and Got Their Asses Kicked By #SomeCrimeAlleyKid”
Fixed that headline for you.
Cookie Mamma @LoraineP70
This is terrible!!
Roy Parker @HonoraryBronteBrother
Terrible in that they were -only- hospitalized. Watch <<this>> and tell me you’re on their side.
Killer Crock can bite ALL my ass! @MightyGothamite
And what were those “children of Gotham’s elite” doing down in Crime Alley in the middle of the night in the first place? Any details on exactly what they were up to you’d like to share, GG? Any activities they might’ve been engaged in at the time?
Doctor Evil Bitch @synthpentel
These f***king ***holes acting like we haven’t all already seen that “Gonna murder you all one by one and cut off your d*cks” video. Get f**cked!
Free Curse with Every Block @VuvuzelaWitch
Gotham Gazette: “These poor kids were just minding their business tending to crippled puppies when-“
Those Actual ‘Poor Kids’: “The moment my legs are no longer splinters, I’m coming back and committing a full-on Queer Genocide. Just you fucking wait [slur slur slur]
Buzzfeed @Buzzfeed
There is Nothing Rich White Men Can Do That’ll Get Them Treated as Adults: The Developing Case of an Attempted Massacre at a Queer Youth Homeless Shelter
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
~0645
Gotham Gazette @GothamGazette
We have pulled a recently posted online-only article for rewriting in light of still developing information. If we offended anyone with our original phrasing, we do apologize.
Doctor Evil Bitch @synthpentel
Hey, speaking of things to be offended by, everyone see that compilation of cellcamera footage the kids took when those poor innocent rich kids were trying to burn the place down?
[Video Alt: Centerattack.vid]
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~0700
Branson_Zack on OnlyFans! @ZackBranson
“Mostly Physical”
That’s now I’m going to describe my relationship with my SO the next time family members start getting pushy for a specific label to put on us. Thanks, #CrimeAlleyKid!
Mrs_Anderson88 @mrs_anderson88
Okay, I’ve seen like five instances of people making “Mostly Physical” jokes in the last half hour. What late night weirdness did I miss by having a sane sleep schedule?
“The Outlaw” Jimmy Janes @janie033
Probably related to this. link
Mrs_Anderson88 @mrs_anderson88
THE RED HOOD?!?!?????
“The Outlaw” Jimmy Janes @janie033
To be fair, -most- people’s relationship to the Red Hood is ‘mostly physical’. Don’t think this guy’s using it in the ‘getting beaten into a light coma by his fists’ sense, though.
No Relation to Doctor Isley @BetterThanTikTok
“This guy”? That’s MISTER #TheCrimeAlleyKid to you, sir! Show some goddamn respect!
Himbo Admiration @himboheadquarters
The next social network better have “Mostly Physical” as one of their preset relationship options, that’s all I can say.
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~0715
Crystal Flowers @EugeneFlores980
Holy shit, I got forwarded this by a friend w/o source, but is this shit true? I knew Gotham was fucked up, but have they really just cut out a whole neighborhood like that?
[Video Alt: CrimeAlleyRant.mp4]
Roy Parker @HonoraryBronteBrother
#TheCrimeAlleyKid is dropping nothing but truth throughout all of this.
No Relation to Doctor Isley @BetterThanTikTok
In the extended version, he goes on for like a whole other bit about why Red Hood’s the only good thing to have ever happened to us too.
Name’s Buck and I Like to [Redacted] @OldBuckNewTricks
Oh my god, seriously? He does a whole ‘My boyfriend is the awesomeness’ rant to the fucking GCPD? That is the cutest goddamn thing, ever.
Crystal Flowers @EugeneFlores980
Boyfriend? Who said anything about #TheCrimeAlleyKid being a boyfriend?
Himbo Admiration @himboheadquarters
Oh shit! You haven’t seen? One sec, Imma gonna DM you the pictures!
Whumpus Warning @friendlywhumpus
I believe this is the video he’s talking about.
Also, @BetterThanTikTok, do you have any idea who this guy -is-?
[TCAK_Rant_Full.mpg]
No Relation to Doctor Isley @BetterThanTikTok
#TheCrimeAlleyKid? I have no idea. Never seen him before.
Micola - 18+ Only - ACAB @MocabularyFunctions
Yeah, as someone else who’s a Crime Alley native, I have no clue who this #TheCrimeAlleyKid guy could be either.
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~0730
Meme Mommy Milkers @ashley_jerr_03
Babe! Babe, wake up! A new copypasta just dropped, babe!
[Video Alt: Do I Look Crazy.mov]
Crush Me Nightwing @nightwingsthighs
Please don’t yeet me like a Robin, #CrimeAlleyKid, but yes. Yes you do in fact look exactly like that kind of crazy.
(Pretty sure I’m into that, though…)
Interrupting Crow @corvids_and_caverns
Did you maybe miss the part where he’s already hooked up with the Red “Mass Murderer” Hood?
Crush Me Nightwing @nightwingsthighs
Maybe they’re poly?
Interrupting Crow @corvids_and_caverns
THAT’S NOT THE PART I’M WORRIED ABOUT @nightwingsthighs!!!
Himbo Admiration @himboheadquarters
Wait, what was that about tanking a bomb? There was a bomb? I’m missing critical #TheCrimeAlleyKid Lore™ here!
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~0800
WigganNiko @NikoBowden7
Wait! Wait. Waitwaitwaitwaitwait. Is -every-single- trending video this morning all from the same goddam event??
WigganNiko @NikoBowden7
My current list of all the videos that seem to be centered around That Incident (whatever it was):
* That disgusting ‘Kill All ***s’ rant one with blond skullface.
* Red Hood snuggling that #TheCrimeAlleyKid guy.
* “Mostly Physical”
* “DISARM ME!!!” AKA “Robin Yeet” [Having trouble tracking down a live link for this one. They keep going down.]
* That stone-cold “Fuck you all for abandoning us” speech from someone I’m pretty sure is -also- #TheCrimeAlleyKid
* “Good Karen vs Cops”
Billy Matthews @lifecoachmatthews
There’s some compilation videos that look like they were shot during the actual attack that everything else is the aftermath of. They’re pretty fucking intense, though.
Cape Watch on Twitter @OfficialCapeWatch
Pretty sure that laser light show over Crime Alley last night was connected link
Mothman is My Husbando @BernardDowd06
Believe the cell-phone footage of the nighttime street exploding into fire was on this same street too. Probably why there’s shit burning in the background of all the other ones.
WigganNiko @NikoBowden7
This is why you have your own FARK tag, Gotham. Jesus.
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~8:30
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
Okay, this is fucking hilarious and I have to share how the last half hour has gone.
As you should know by now, I work at the prestigious NAME REDACTED FOR JOB SECURITY newspaper in Gotham “If you lived here, you’d need psychiatry by now” City. 1/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
We were out at 8-fucking-AM-in the goddam morning for a hastily-called press conference being held by one of the city’s big movers and shakers “To Address the Terrible Violence and Tragedy to Befall Our City Last Night” 2/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
So we show up along with every other newspaper in town, and we got Mover and Shaker’s whole family up there looking all very sad and somber and standing supportively around their highschool son who looks like he just went a few rounds with fucking Bane. 3/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
So Very Concerned Father starts giving a conference about what happened to their dear sweet little angel and how he was brutally savaged by evil thuggish brutes from westside when what he’s talking about starts sounding familiar to me. 4/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
And it suddenly dawns on me that, oh shit, this is one of the kids who was involved on that homeless camp attack in Park Row last night! The one with all the videos that’ve been circling around this morning. 5/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
And I’m not the only one making this connection. Like half the reporters and staff in the room are starting to do that shifting and muttering thing they do when they feel like they’re getting bullshitted to even more than usual. 6/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
Family remains -totally- oblivious to this shift in the atmosphere, even as reporters are elbowing the people next to them to ask what’s up and are getting That Rant or the Buzzfeed article forwarded to their phones then they start doing the shift and mutter thing too. 7/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
By the time they’re ready for questions, everyone’s smelling blood in the water. 8/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
-Very- first question: “I apologize if I missed it, but could you tell us -exactly- what street your son was on when this happened last night? And also what he and his friends were doing there in the first place.” 9/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
Four questions in, and the parents are only just starting to pick up that maybe the reporters aren’t 100% on their side, so they call on Ms. Vale for an easy freebie. 10/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
Ms. Vale, with a totally perfect poker face, stands up and asks (and I quote) “For no particular reason, but what are your opinions on the sorts of people who’d attempt to trap over fifty minors in a building and then set it on fire while waiting outside with the express intention of murdering anyone who escaped?” 11/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
“And as a followup for the son: Are you familiar with a young man who attends your school named Kennith Green?” 12/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
The family’d fled out the back exit barely a minute before I started this tweet chain, with half the reporters chasing after them. 13/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
The rest are still here, writing their copy. The reporter I’m assisting has been cackling on and off the entire time they’ve been working theirs up. 14/
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
So what kinda start has your all days been getting off to?
Kyle Kendrick NOT @work @KendrickOffHours
From a paper and reporter I am -completely- unconnected with in any professional or legal sense: Vicky’s Views: Family’s Attempted PR Outreach Turns Into PR Disaster as Gotham Scion Flees Press
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The Gotham Examiner: 120 Years of Trust @GothamExaminer
Who IS #TheCrimeAlleyKid
We’ve all seen him, we all know about him.
So why can’t people find anyone who knows who he is?
Matt Evans Online @MakeHumanitySuperAgain
Fucking seriously! It’s like they’re all hiding him for some reason. Probably has 75 warrants out for raping babies or something they don’t want the rest of us to know about.
That’s Mister Street Rat to You @templeton903
Sorry man, lived here all my life and I’ve got no idea who he might be.
In An Alley World @AlleyGal08
Hey, not our fault all the videos were filmed with a potato! How am I supposed to recognize a bunch of pixels like that?
Roy Parker @HonoraryBronteBrother
There’s like 100,000 people who live here, you expect us to have all of them memorized in case you need to do an online lineup? Fuck off.
Matt Evans Online @MakeHumanitySuperAgain
You can’t honestly believe we’d fall for this. Why’re you fuckers protecting him?
Pretty Fly for a Brown Guy @alley_original01
My man, he’s a youngish muscle dude with a shaved head and a sleeveless leather jacket. There are literally five guys who match that exact description in my apartment building alone. I don’t know what you expect us to do about that.
No Relation to Doctor Isley @BetterThanTikTok
There is no identity of #TheCrimeAlleyKid. He is a Tulpa created from the combined love all of Crime Alley has for the Red Hood to be his ideal boytoy.
No Sleep Til Brooklyn (We are never going to Brooklyn) @seesees88
You know what? Fuckit. New canon established. #TheCrimeAlleyKid is Red Hood’s pet Tulpa. Everyone can wrap up their think pieces and go home, now.
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Private Oracle Archive: 0932
Transcript: One-on-One Communication Between Subject 1 and Subject 2
Subject 1 – I saw you just go green. Can I talk to you about something?
Subject 2 – Finally finished getting all the HD footage from tonight scrubbed from the net. Was just about to contact you for the same.
Subject 1 – Oh! Um. Do you want to go first?
Subject 2 – You weren’t seeing things.
Subject 1 - …Okay.
Subject 2 – I’m assuming that’s what you wanted to check in about. I had the footage from your excavation efforts up. I saw what you were uncovering, and I saw it disappear.
Subject 1 – You actually saw it? Like, on the video footage? Because I went to check mine and-
Subject 2 – It’s gone from mine too. Whatever happened… I saw it on the live footage. But after… whatever it was that happened happened, it wasn’t on any of the recordings.
Subject 1 - …shit. I think I might’ve preferred it if I had been uncovering some sort of Ghost Sight illusion.
Subject 2 – Whatever removed those remains was retroactive. Red Robin had been collecting tissue and blood samples from upside and a portion of what he turned in are unmarked swabs and empty evidence containers. The videos clearly show you and the others who’d been helping you reacting to something that’s no longer there. The timing is impossible to ignore as well.
Subject 1 - So I didn’t imagine that part either. That all vanished right before-
Subject 2 – There was one eighth of a second between the uncovered remains vanishing and Conrad’s emergency beacon activating, yes.
Subject 1 – Fuck. What does that even mean?
Subject 2 – I don’t know.
Subject 1 – How do we explain this to B. Or Jay?
Subject 2 – My suggestion? We don’t. There’s not enough information, and I can’t trust either of them not to wildly overreact before we have any understanding of what they’re even reacting to.
Subject 1 – Honestly, hard same. …Shit. Okay. So. What do you want me to do on this?
Subject 2 – Nothing for now. I have some avenues I explore to try and get a sense for what questions we even need to be asking. In the meantime, keep your eyes open whenever you’re around Conrad. If you see or experience anything you think is noteworthy, let me know.
Subject 1 - I can do that.
…
Subject 2 – Was there something else?
Subject 1 – No, no. I just. … *heavy sigh* I was down, at the entrance to the tunnel right before the bomb went off.
Subject 2 – Right?
Subject 1 – I saw where they both where right before the explosion. Conrad- What we-… He was right where I would’ve expected to find him. The first time we found him. Where they dug him up… That was on the other side of where the bomb was. He would’ve had to been thrown -towards- the bomb by the blast to wind up where he did.
Subject 2 – I know! I know. I don’t know what it means, but I know.
Subject 1 – Okay. Sorry. I know you’ve had a long night already.
Subject 2 – *soft sigh* *fond* You need a reality check to make sure you’re not seeing things. That’s important even without poorly understood Seeing Things powers. It’s okay, Duke. You saw what you thought you saw. I am confirming your reality.
Subject 1 – Heh. Thanks, Barb. I need to get going.
Subject 2 – Yeah, we all need to hit the sack after all this.
Subject 1 – I fucking wish. No, I need to get going or I’m going to be late for school.
[[transcript ends]]
[[transcript saved to off-line server]]
[[delete transcript from all on-line servers? y/n]]
[[deleting…]]
[[transcript deleted]]
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~1000
Trending on leX for [Gotham]
1 – Gotham Bay Bridge
Trending With: explosion, detours, #ItsTuesdayLemon
2-The Crime Alley Kid
Trending With: Crime Alley, arson, Red Hood
3-Arkam Break-In
Trending With: Batgirls, Reverse Uno, Joker
4-Wayne
Trending With: 50,000 Dollars, Loan Forgiveness, Daddy
5-Cobblepot
Trending With: Election, Corruption, Ray Kadwell
Notes:
#TheCrimeAlleyKid will return in The Crime Alley Kid Meets Jason Todd