The mountain winds howled through the high halls of the League's fortress, but Jason welcomed the solitude.
"I'll be training in isolation again," he had told Talia. And she had allowed it—believing, perhaps, that he was a man still seeking to reclaim himself.
But Jason Todd wasn't reclaiming anything.
He was building something entirely new.
In a forgotten wing of the compound—deep, dusty, locked behind an outdated biometric seal—he found a training hall left untouched by time. No eyes watched him here. No instructors. No shadows trailing behind.
Only silence. And opportunity.
He began simply: notebooks, a chalkboard, a set of battered terminals. And then, he began to push.
The sciences came first.
What once required years of study now folded beneath his gaze in days. Biology, physics, chemistry—he devoured the foundational sciences until they collapsed into simplicity.
Equations flowed like language.
Atomic structure reconfigured itself in his mind.
Cause and effect turned into prediction and control.
The world no longer felt vast and unknowable. It felt like a system—a machine with gears and switches waiting to be pulled by someone who understood its blueprints.
And now, he did.
Soon, the physical world was not enough.
He dove into mathematics, no longer as a discipline, but as a force of will. He wove probability into certainty, turned chaos into patterns, and began building models—simulations of environments, people, outcomes. He built algorithms so advanced they mimicked thought, pre-empted behaviour.
In time, his understanding of computer science grew into dominance. He could infiltrate networks, bypass firewalls, create digital ghosts. He wasn't just a hacker—he was an invisible architect, reshaping digital reality with mere thought and code.
But none of it compared to the human mind.
That's where his fascination bloomed.
He began dissecting texts on psychology, behavioural science, social engineering. Every conversation in the League, every glance, every hesitation—he stored it, analysed it.
He mapped human behaviour like terrain—predictable, navigable, conquerable.
Manipulation was a martial art all its own.
He practiced subtle suggestions, seeded doubts in the minds of instructors, redirected suspicion away from himself—all without a whisper of alarm. And each time it worked, he felt a thrill colder than vengeance.
The mind is the true battlefield, he thought. And I'm building the only weapon that matters.
Then came the body.
Once, he had been Robin. Fast. Strong. Reckless.
But now, those old forms felt primitive.
He studied movement through a new lens: biomechanics, kinesthetics, kinetic energy flow. Every tendon, every bone, every muscle became a variable to optimize, not just train.
And so, he created something new.
A martial art forged not by tradition, but by logic and mastery.
It blended the unpredictable rhythm of chaos theory with the biological precision of pressure point combat. Every move was calculated, every strike optimized not for force—but for effect.
He called it Tactum.
A style designed not only to defeat—but to dismantle.
Where Batman fought with justice, and the League fought with fear, Tactum fought with truth—the cold, anatomical reality of dominance.
It was a dance of precision. A form built on the inevitability of collapse.
He tested it in secret—against dummies, simulations, even stray assassins who challenged him in passing. He lost... at first.
But each loss became a model.
Each failure, a lesson absorbed instantly.
And soon, he didn't lose anymore.
By the end of his third week in isolation, he no longer recognized his reflection.
He wasn't Robin.
He wasn't Red Hood.
He wasn't just Jason Todd.
He was something reborn, built in silence, sharpened in shadow. An intellect that bent reality. A fighter that moved like code. A mind that mastered the patterns of the world around him.
And yet, beneath it all, he was still alone.
A mind too sharp to trust others. A heart too scarred to reach out.
But he didn't need connection right now.
He needed control.
And Tactum, his silent symphony of motion and dominance, was the first step.