"Move, I'll cover you!" Grifter smacked the rear of the vehicle before vaulting away, diving behind another car for cover as Black Mask slammed his hand onto the ignition pad.
The engine roared to life as the car lurched forward, fishtailing as he tried to steer while ducking low in his seat. Metal crunched when he clipped the side of the vehicle he'd just abandoned, with the driver still hiding inside.
Across the lot, Red Hood stood planted—one pistol trained on Grifter's position, the other locked onto Black Mask—and opened fire.
Screeeech—
The escaping car scraped hard against the other vehicle, sparks spitting as it dragged along the metal and sped toward the exit. Before it could clear the lane, Red Hood squeezed off a shot and blew out one of the front tires.
The driver from the earlier vehicle realized staying put was a death sentence. He threw his car into gear and peeled out, swinging in behind Black Mask to shield his boss from further fire.
Red Hood adjusted instantly. He fired at the new obstacle—one round into the front left tire, another into the rear on the same side, then a third into the front right. The vehicle jerked violently, swerving as control slipped away. The imbalance gave him the opening he needed. He took it—sending another precise shot into one the front tire on Black Mask's fleeing car.
Black Mask swerved hard, fighting the steering wheel as the ruined tires dragged and pulled against him. The car bucked and scraped, but he managed to power through and burst out of the parking lot.
The only reason he made it was because Grifter kept Red Hood occupied, laying down just enough pressure to split his focus.
"He's gone now.." Grifter's voice came through as the gunfire died instantly. In its place, a thick, uneasy silence settled over the lot—smoke drifting, and shell casings scattered across the asphalt.
"So?" Red Hood finally spoke, breaking the quiet. 'Hope this guy isn't thinking we're about to shake hands and compare dick sizes now that we're alone, he thought dryly.
"It's obvious you've got skills," Grifter called out. "How about we handle introductions before we get back to trying to kill each other?"
There was no mockery in his tone, for he has come to acknowledge Red Hood's marksmanship. Respect, even. He'd already measured Red Hood and was clearly looking forward to the inevitable clash.
"I'm Grifter," he said, stepping out from behind cover and into view.
"Red Hood."
He stepped out as well, and the two men faced each other from a short distance apart. The air between them felt somehow tense.
They both knew the chaos they'd just caused wouldn't go unanswered—sirens were probably already echoing somewhere in the distance. In a city like Gotham, residents didn't hesitate to call the cops when automatic gunfire started rattling beneath their windows. Especially around that neighborhood.
And honestly? Who could blame them.
The question was whether these two could finish what they started before blue and red lights flooded the lot.
"I see the cowardly tyrant hired you to take me out," Red Hood said. His guns hung low, but his grip remained tight. Across from him, Grifter mirrored the posture, twin pistols resting near his hips.
"Yeah," Grifter replied evenly. "He did."
Without lifting his arms fully, he snapped off two shots straight from the hip.
Red Hood answered in kind, with quick and subsequent squeezes of the trigger. Muzzle flashes lit the space between them as they moved through each other's gunfire, weaving and shifting like they were testing one another.
'Why does this feel like some old-school gunslinger standoff at high noon outside a saloon?" Red Hood mocked inwardly, calmly studying the man across from him.
He watched everything—the footwork, the shoulder tension, even the cadence of Grifter's voice.
'His movements and body language wasn't that of a person who's been shot.'
That realization narrowed his focus.
'Fast healing?
'A meta-human? Fuck, it just had to be one with accelerated healing.' He inwardly remarked.
"You couldn't get to my boss," Grifter called out, sarcasm rolling off his tongue. "But I can make this worth your time."
Red Hood's jaw tightened beneath the helmet. Black Mask slipping through his fingers meant delay and another attempt to get his hands on him.
He holstered one pistol smoothly and reached over his shoulder with his free hand.
Grifter reacted instantly. A shot cracked through the air, aimed straight at Red Hood's helmet.
Steel flashed.
The blade Red Hood pulled from his back snapped into place just in time, the bullet glancing off with a sharp metallic ping. Sparks spat between them as both men surged forward, guns barking again as they closed the distance.
They fired repeatedly while advancing, bodies weaving and angling, slipping past rounds by inches. It wasn't wild shooting—it was controlled aggression, each man reading the other in real time.
When the gap between them vanished, firearms became liabilities.
Both holstered in near-perfect sync.
Red Hood kept the sword in hand with his blade angled forward.
Grifter answered by drawing twin daggers, steel catching the dim light as they stepped fully into close-quarters combat.
Their blades collided with a sharp metallic crack, steel grinding against steel. Red Hood leaned into the bind and, with a powerful shove of his sword, forced Grifter backward—his enhanced strength tipping the balance. In that brief second where Grifter's footing faltered, Red Hood drove a heavy boot into his torso.
The impact lifted Grifter clean off his feet and sent him crashing back-first into a parked car as metal dented under the force.
Jason showed no hesitation. While Grifter was still airborne, he quick-drew his pistol and fired, lining up a clean headshot.
But Grifter snapped his head aside mid-fall. The bullet tore past where his skull had been a fraction of a second earlier.
Grifter hit the ground and rolled. He sprang back up with little sign of damage, drew his pistol, and fired in Red Hood's direction while shifting toward cover.
He'd made his own observations.
The strength behind that shove, and the weight of Red Hood's sword whenever he evaded with his blades.
'Impressive.' He noted inwardly.
What he hadn't measured yet was speed—how fast Red Hood could truly move once things escalated.
Grifter was no amateur. When it came to his combat prowess, he was well trained in the Coda fighting technique…but so far, their clash had shown him that he wasn't facing some disheveled vigilante playing dress up.
'To push me like that at both long and mid-range?' Grifter assessed inwardly. 'He's had advanced training. No question about it.'
Grifter rolled his shoulder slowly, testing it. Heat and wetness clung to his sleeve—arm hit. Although his wounds had healed up, the burn in his thigh confirmed the second. Both bullets were taken while shielding his temporary employer from Red Hood's ambush.
'That lucky bastard better count his blessings I made it to Gotham when I did,' Grifter mused, eyes never leaving the figure ahead. 'Otherwise, he'd be bleeding out at this guy's feet.'
Red Hood was walking toward him with steady and measured steps.
"Pretty ballsy, "I'll give you that." Grifter remarked.
He performed a smooth reload without breaking eye contact, and with fluid motion. There was something about this guy that set his instincts on edge.
'The way he walks…'
Even with his heavy boots and built—not a single echoing thud across the concrete as his calm strides felt somewhat predatory.
Whatever this was about to become, it wasn't going to go down easy.
"I can tell you're not just some neighborhood vigilante," Grifter said as he took that final step out from behind cover, fully exposing himself to the open floor of the garage.
Red Hood stopped mid-stride, the distance between them held.
"You don't move like military either," Grifter continued, studying him carefully.
Red Hood's helmet tilted a few degrees to the side as Jason weighed his options behind his mask.
'Do I really need to finish this right now?'
Sirens could start wailing any second. And if it wasn't the cops, it'd be worse.
'Batman. Nightwing. Robin. The three musketeers.'
The thought tightened his jaw. The last thing he needed was a family reunion in the middle of this mess.
His stance, however, told a different story with guns at the ready, and shoulders squared. The red helmet reflecting the dim lights like an executioner considering where to place the blade.
"You're an assassin." Grifter wasn't expecting a proper response or confirmation for he had come to know his adversary wasn't a man of many words.
The words came through Jason's thoughts.
Jason's focus snapped back to Grifter.
He hadn't decided yet as he considered full assault, but he'd have to end things fast, then disappear before company arrived… or drop a smoke bomb and leave this problem for another night. Either way, the clock was ticking.
"I suppose a real assassin wouldn't admit that to his opponent," Grifter added, voice calm but probing.
Behind the visor, Jason finished his internal debate.
End it. Quickly.
'Even with his ability to regenerate, a bullet to the head should put him down for good.'
Grifter wasn't some random merc. He was Black Mask's shield now. That meant this wouldn't be their last encounter. If Jason wanted Roman Sionis alone—if he wanted that reckoning to happen with his own hands—then this man would have to be dealt with sooner or later.
Might as well be sooner.
The air between them thickened again, heavy with the understanding that whatever happened next would decide who walked away before the sirens closed in.
The faint wail of sirens began to thread through the night air, distant but closing in.
Grifter heard it. So did Red Hood.
"I'm not a fan of wasting time on a job," Grifter said evenly, eyes locked forward. "The faster I wrap one up, the faster I'm free to grab the next. Sometimes the next one pays even better."
Neither man lowered their weapon.
They stood in the open—two professionals fully aware of the other's skill, yet confident enough in their own to risk the exposure.
Then the silence shattered as gunfire ripped through the parking structure in sharp, concussive bursts. Sparks spat from concrete pillars. Windshields imploded, glass spraying across the floor.
The sound bounced violently off the low ceiling, turning each shot into a thunderclap.
Neither of them stayed still.
They moved as they efficiently fired at themselves with no wasted motion as they evaded the other's bullets.
Until one of the rounds clipped Grifter's side, tearing through fabric.
"Ouch," Grifter muttered, executing a one-handed reload with fluid preficiency. "You shoot like a girl."
Red Hood didn't dignify it with a response.
Instead, he holstered one pistol and pushed forward.
Grifter fired again, but Jason surged in and smashed his forearm into Grifter's shooting arm, knocking the shot off-line as a he followed through with a right hook.
Grifter ducked under, dropping low and sweeping a boot knife toward the back of Jason's knee. The blade sliced fabric as Red Hood pivoted just enough to spare the tendon.
Jason answered with a vicious front kick.
Grifter barely brought his guard up in time. Even so, the impact launched him backward into the side of a van as metal buckled inward with a heavy crunch. 'This guy is quite juiced up.' His inward remark refered to the weight and power behind every hit from Red Hood.
He hit the ground, rolled with the momentum—
—and came up firing.
Red Hood swatted both pistols off-line and stepped inside the pocket. His fist shot forward, straight. It slammed into Grifter's jaw like a piston firing from an engine block.
Grifter planted his feet as his head snapped to the side like his neck had broken.
But he didn't fall.
A tight hook whipped across and connected solidly with Jason's helmet, of which Jason's head shifted a fraction from the force.
Grifter's knuckles lit up with pain.
"Okay," he exhaled. "You're juiced."
Jason did not give a response. He drove an elbow downward that split Grifter's eyebrow open beneath his mask, then followed with a brutal knee straight into the ribs.
Something gave.
Grifter grunted as pain flashed through him, but he caught Jason's leg and twisted sharply, trying to tear his balance out from under him.
Jason didn't merely resist the pull, he powered through it.
He wrenched his leg free by force alone and spun into a backfist that cracked across Grifter's temple. The world tilted for a heartbeat, lights smearing sideways in Grifter's vision.
They broke apart, creating a sliver of space.
Both were breathing harder now.
Grifter drew again and fired point-blank in rapid succession as Jason closed in on him with swift and evasive footwork.
Close enough to engage with his sword, a knife flashed upward in a tight arc toward Jason's ribs before he could draw his sword.
Jason caught his wrist mid-stab.
The grip tightened as bone strained under pressure.
"You're good," Red Hood's distorted voice filtered through the helmet. "Just not good enough."
He twisted, forcing the knife loose, and followed with a straight punch driven deep into Grifter's already-damaged ribs.
The air blasted out of Grifter's lungs in one violent, helpless exhale.
A spinning backfist came out of nowhere and caught Grifter clean, sending him skidding across the concrete floor in a rough scrape of boots and blood.
He barely had time to breathe before Red Hood was on him again.
A heavy boot came down hard, grinding into his supposed injured thigh and pinning him in place.
Grifter hissed—but he was still smirking beneath the mask, blood running in thin lines down his face.
Jason shifted his weight, lining up the angle to finish it.
But Grifter moved first.
His dagger flashed into his grip, driving upward with every intent to drive the blade inside the upper inner thigh—aimed at the femoral artery.
Jason reacted instantly, retracting his foot and pivoting off-line as the blade cut through empty air. In the same motion, he fired downward at Grifter during the retreat.
Grifter rolled sharply, the bullet cracking against concrete where his head had been a split second earlier. Mid-roll, he fired back to keep Jason honest, the return shot forcing distance. Then he flowed up to his feet in one smooth, gymnast-like motion.
And even as he rose, the worst of his wounds were already knitting themselves together.
Although marksmanship alongside hand-to-hand combat were areas he excelled at, but Red Hood's physical enhancement caused him difficulty.
Fortunately, the Gen Factor had gifted him more.
Accelerated regeneration was obvious at this point. But he also posses other latent abilities that increase his ordds in fights.
"Next time," he rasped, adjusting his stance, "I'm charging hazard pay."
This time, he made an exception.