Faced with the blinding glare of a laser beam and the very real possibility of not being able to dodge in time, Jason didn't panic. His pulse didn't spike, his breath didn't hitch. He kept calm—stone cold calm—the kind you only learn after crawling through pits of hell. He's only reaction was from the realization thaf he had placed himself in a rough spot.
Like a trained gunslinger drawing at high noon, he reached for his grapple gun. His arm snapped up in a blur, the cable firing with a hiss as the hook clamped against a steel girder high above. Jason swung wide, his body cutting across the air just as the Cyclops assassin unleashed his blast.
The beam burned across the alley, trailing after him with a hungry glow. Jason felt the heat singe across his backplate before it sliced clean through the grapple line, severing his only lifeline, literally. The cord whipped back with a crack, leaving him weightless in open air.
Mid-fall, with gravity dragging him down and the assassin already charging for another shot, Jason realized there was no quick fix. His sword couldn't block a blast like this—it wasn't a focused shot anymore, but a charged wave, a sweeping radius of pure destruction. Attempting to deflect it would've been suicide.
So what now?
That was the thought that stabbed into the back of his mind as his conscious self had no time to strategize. The beam was already gathering, the assassin's mechanical eye glowing like the sun about to break over the horizon. Jason was falling straight into it, no cover, no angle.
Below, the other assassins smirked beneath their masks. They thought it was over. Red Hood, caught mid-air, about to be erased. A couple more seconds and their job would be done.
They thought wrong.
Jason's hand darted to his belt. His fingers closed around three smoke pellets, and without hesitation, he smashed them against the wall as he fell past it. The spheres cracked open, and thick smoke exploded outward, swallowing the space in a heavy shroud.
The Cyclops assassin didn't flinch. He didn't need to. Jason had to land beneath the smoke—that much was obvious. He'd be waiting.
But Jason wasn't about to do the obvious.
He drove his combat knife into the wall, the steel screeching as sparks spat out. The friction slowed his fall, his boots braced against the brick as he pushed off. Instead of dropping straight down through the smoke like a sitting duck, he propelled himself sideways, kicking hard against the surface to launch himself out of the shroud at an unexpected angle.
The assassin's glowing eye followed downward, expecting the red helmet to emerge. Jason broke upward instead. And before the cyclops could even process the misdirection, Jason had already hurled his crowbar with all the strength in his body.
It cut through the air like a bullet, a spinning blur of steel. The weapon pierced directly into the glowing lens of the assassin's eye. There was no time to dodge, no chance to react.
The crowbar punched through the mechanism and into his skull, detonating the unstable charge inside. The eye flared, then ruptured in a burst of molten fire. The explosion tore upward, shredding the assassin from the chest up. His torso vanished in a spray of sparks and smoke, leaving nothing but a mangled lower half collapsing onto the ground.
The two remaining assassins—the dual-wielder and the one armed with the double-edged lance—froze in shock. They had expected Red Hood to die. Instead, he had just dismembered their teammate in one brutal, improvised counter.
Even Batman, who prided himself on being unshakable, lowered his binoculars for a brief moment. He had watched Jason's every move, calculating, cataloguing—but this? He needed to pause. To reassess.
The precision. The speed. The sheer force it took to hurl a crowbar with enough power to puncture the plating and rupture an energy core. Jason had always been strong, always been ruthless, but this was something different. Something sharpened. Evolved.
He slid the binoculars back up. His eyes narrowed as he silently admitted; Jason Todd had become something he couldn't fully measure.
On the ground, Jason stood tall again, dusting off flakes of debris from his leather jacket as if nothing had happened. "That was a bit much, don't you think?" he muttered casually, his voice carrying just enough to reach the others. The taunt was deliberate, and it worked.
The woman's posture stiffened. Her rage leaked through the cracks of her calm. "It was supposed to be a simple extermination," she hissed, her voice sharp with venom. "I didn't expect this job to cost us this much."
Her comrade stepped forward, tightening his grip on the lance. "Black Mask will have to pay double for this mess."
Jason cocked his head, looking between them, his tone dry. "All that skill, all that power, and you're just guns for hire. Really makes you think."
Her glare sharpened as her blades ignited again, glowing brighter than before. "From what I hear, you're the same," she shot back.
Jason chuckled beneath his helmet, tilting it slightly. "Maybe. But I don't bark and wag my tail for a lunatic like Roman Sionis."
That landed. He could see it in her stance, the sudden twitch of her grip. Her blades flared with a furious light as bloodlust poured out of her. Her teammate mirrored her rage, his lance shifting as he prepared to flank.
Jason smirked inside the helmet. Ragebaiting. Classic. He had them rattled, emotions cracking through discipline. That was the moment he wanted—the second where anger made them predictable.
The tension spiked in the air, heavy enough to taste. The two assassins circled him, dripping with intent to kill, while Jason stood at their center, calm as stone. His muscles loose, his breathing steady. They thought they were about to corner him. He was already calculating the counter.
Then a shadow dropped between them. A fourth presence hit the ground with the weight of a predator.
Batman.
Jason glanced over his shoulder at the familiar silhouette. "Well, look who decided to join the party." His voice was mocking, but there was an edge beneath it—recognition, inevitability.
The female assassin shifted her stance, blades humming. "Black Mask said you two might be working together," she spat. "Looks like the bastard was right."
Batman gave her nothing. Not a word, not a twitch. He stood tall, cape draped like a shroud, his gaze drilling into her with an intensity that pressed down like gravity. His presence alone forced her to re-adjust, her confidence wavering for the first time that night.
She lunged, blades flashing, and the fight split into two.
Batman met her with nothing but his fists, slipping between her strikes. She slashed for his torso, but he dipped low, his counterpunch snapping upward into her jaw. The blow lifted her off her feet, but she twisted mid-air and came down swinging.
Her second blade screamed for his shoulder, aiming to sever limb from body, but he pivoted, letting the strike carve through nothing but cape. He answered with another strike, relentless, pressing her back with precision. She tried to overwhelm him, her dual blades a whirlwind, but every slash was met with evasion, every gap punished with brutal counters.
Step by step, she forced him backward—until his back bumped against Jason's.
Jason blocked the lance's strike with his combat knife, metal grinding against metal. Batman, without breaking rhythm, spoke low. "You knew I was watching you." His tone wasn't questioning. He was stating facts but also wanted confirmation.
"Of course I did," Jason shot back, teeth clenched as he shoved the lance aside. "Nothing goes down in Gotham without you or one of your merry crew sniffing it out."
The assassin's lance twisted, splitting at the midpoint. With a snap, the weapon became two individual blades, one aimed for Jason's ribs.
Jason jerked aside, but not fast enough. Steel kissed flesh, slicing deep across his side. His armor slowed it, but blood still spilled, soaking through his gear. His body jerked from the sting, breath hissing between his teeth.
Grunting, Jason drove the steel of his heavy boots into the torso of his attacker. The same strike had sent the assassin flying across the ground earlier. But this time, the man braced himself better. His stance was rooted, armor absorbing most of the blow, and instead of collapsing, he rejoined the broken shaft of his weapon, snapping it back into place until the halves locked once again into a long, gleaming lance.
The assassin came at him with a savage diagonal slash. Jason tilted his body just enough, sidestepping with precision, the blade cutting air where his torso had been a split second earlier. The air whistled with the force of the strike.
Jason then held on to the body of his lance to restrict him, he tried to yank his weapon back, but Jason's grip on the weapon was immovable. His strength matched the assassin's—even though the other man's body was reinforced with technological armor.
"Speaking of, where are they? I don't see that little devil lurking around anywhere." Red Hood said to Batman, refering to NightWing and Robin.
Then his forehead crashed forward in a brutal headbutt. The crack rang out like a gunshot. Before the man could reel back, Jason's combat knife flashed, carving clean through armor plating and flesh alike. The assassin's arm hit the ground with a wet thud, the stump spurting as a guttural scream tore through his modulator.
The shriek was loud enough to draw eyes. Batman and the other assassin fighting him froze for a heartbeat, their heads snapping toward the sound.
What they saw was Jason driving his knife straight into the man's stomach. He twisted the blade, forcing it deeper, and kicked the back of his opponent's knee at the same time. The joint buckled, and the assassin collapsed onto one leg, gasping through the modulator. Jason didn't stop. He pivoted with a vicious roundhouse, his boot cracking across the man's helmet, snapping his head sideways before sending him sprawling to the ground.
"No!" Batman and the remaining assassin shouted in unison, but their voices collided with futility. Jason seized the fallen lance and, without hesitation, plunged the weapon down. The blade punched through armor and ribcage, spearing the assassin's heart. His body jerked violently, then stilled.
For a moment, the battlefield went quiet. The sound of combat hung suspended, broken only by the faint rattle of the dying man's breath before it gave out. The silence pressed in heavy, carrying the weight of something raw and irreversible.
Batman seized the brief pause, his fists moving like lightning as he struck the female assassin across the jaw, then struck the back of her neck, just below her hairline. She crumpled unconscious to the ground.
Jason turned, his shoulders rolling back as he faced Bruce. Behind the red mask, his eyes burned cold, but his voice cut with mocking dismissal. "Just be happy I at least let one live." Jason turned to Batman, not feeling the father and son reunion vibe at the moment.
"They are assassins," Jason added, as if that alone was justification, though he could see the look of judgment carved into Batman's face.
Bruce's reply was sharp, biting back without hesitation. "And what are you?"
Jason tilted his head, almost amused by the venom, before replying low and steady. "I'm tending to the wounds of Gotham… better than you ever did." He shifted his weight as though preparing to leave, unwilling to linger in the same space as Bruce. Staying too long meant risking anger boiling over—or worse, the pull of emotions he didn't want to feel around his father.
"You're stealing territory from Black Mask and killing anyone who gets in your way," Batman countered, his cape hanging heavy as he spoke.
Jason didn't flinch. "Better to control the infection than let it fester into cancer. I'm cutting out the rot so Gotham has a chance at healing—even if just by a mere fraction." His voice dropped as he said it, almost like a child trying to convince a father that he knew what he was doing, even when everything about his methods screamed otherwise.
Bruce's glare hardened. "And how do you plan on doing that?"
Jason's reply was blunt, his tone stripped of pretense. "I have a plan. And Black Mask is just a piece of the puzzle."
"A plan?" Bruce pressed. "What could you possibly gain by targeting Black Mask?" His tone was softer now, probing, searching for a glimpse of reason beneath his son's actions so far.
Jason paused, his voice cooling into something more dangerous. "Control." The word lingered heavy in the air. His posture stiffened, his presence shifting as if a darker side of him had stepped forward. In Bruce's eyes, Jason no longer looked like the lost son he had lost.
"You're becoming a crime lord," Batman said, his voice low but edged with conviction.
Jason didn't deny it. "Yes. You can't stop crime—that's what you never understood." His voice lowered, each word dropping like a stone into still water. "I am controlling it."
His presence darkened further. Even his stance carried the weight of something unyielding, someone who had walked too far down a path Bruce couldn't follow.
"You want to rule them by fear, as you've always done," Jason continued, his voice a quiet snarl. "But what happens when they aren't afraid of you? That's where I come in."
Bruce stepped forward, desperation cutting through the mask of the Bat. For the first time, his voice wasn't stern but pleading. "I know what happened to you, Jason. I know what the League did to you. Let me help you."
Jason immediately stepped back, widening the distance, his movements precise and deliberate. "It's too late." His voice wavered for just a moment before hardening again. "You had your chance." His words carried the weight of the Joker, of the vengeance Batman never took on his behalf.
Bruce's eyes narrowed with pain and confusion, but before he could answer, Jason raised his gloved hand, small black pellets glinting between his fingers.
"Until next time," Jason said, his voice heavy with finality.
The pellets hit the ground, bursting into a thick smoke that swallowed him whole. Batman didn't move. His muscles tensed as if preparing to give chase, but something in him refused. He stood rooted, watching the smoke coil and clear until nothing of Jason remained.
Only bodies surrounded him now. The male assassin, lifeless. The female, unconscious. And there, lying amidst the aftermath, was the lance—Jason's final mark before vanishing once more into Gotham's shadows.
Bruce's eyes lingered on the weapon, his jaw tightening as the air around him felt colder, heavier. His son had disappeared again, leaving nothing but questions, blood, and silence behind.
- - -
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