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From the looks of things, Tim figured, the Red Hood was canvasing the Tower methodically. He had started on the first floor and was slowly moving upward, checking every room before ascending to the next. The display of extreme thoroughness and ruthless efficiency would have been impressive if what it meant for Tim wasn’t so frightening.
He’d tried Kon’s room first, then Bart’s; by the time he’d tried to check in with Raven, he’d gotten a pretty good idea of just how fucked he was.
He was running out of time.
Floor by floor. Hood was finishing his search of the fifth floor now, and moving up to the sixth.
Sleeping quarters were on the seventh floor. Tim could not let him reach the seventh floor under any circumstances.
Heavy footsteps coming up the stairs heralded Hood’s arrival. It was like he didn’t care if he was heard. Or like he wanted to be heard.
Tim steeled himself for what was to come.
His teammates were vulnerable.
The power was out. The comms were down.
The only feasible option was for Tim to try to bring the Red Hood down on his own.
Tim dropped down silently from the ceiling and slammed his staff into the back of that gleaming red helmet.
Hood didn"t dodge forward or take the blow. Instead, he spun and caught the strike in the arch of an armored boot with a high kick, his whole body a graceful whip of practiced, controlled force. Effortlessly, he absorbed the shock and channeled it into slamming the staff to the ground.
Tim’s body reacted instinctively even if his mind was lagging slightly behind, catching on the revelation that Hood had been ready for him; impossibly ready, despite Tim knowing for a fact he hadn"t made a sound in his approach.
He aimed a neat, targeted kick of his own at Hood’s side, destabilizing him just enough to prevent Tim"s staff from getting trapped under those boots. He couldn"t quite believe what he was seeing.
"Robin," Hood greeted amicably, mechanized voice ringing out uncannily in the unnatural silence.
"Red Hood." Tim"s mind was racing. The way Hood moved was…weird. There was something distinctly off about it. Something he couldn"t quite put his finger on. "Aren"t you a little far from home?"
"Aren"t you?"
“Yes, but I work here." Tim said reasonably. "I find it hard to believe you"d come all this way for a chat.”
“Good eye.” Hood hummed. While Tim was watching, Hood"s left hand twitched, once, toward the gun holstered at his side.
Tim was moving before the motion had even fully registered in his mind, dropping his center of gravity to stabilize himself before swinging the staff into Hood"s knees with all his strength.
This was a good opening move for two reasons: It either landed very painfully, or it forced your opponent backward, putting them on the defense as well as giving you plenty of room to attack if you happened to be holding a long, two-handed stick.
However, Hood did neither. Instead, he jumped.
No, jump did not quite do the motion justice. He somehow contained all that weight and mass delicately enough to look effortlessly weightless, to float off the ground without a sound and allow Tim’s staff to pass harmlessly beneath his feet.
Again, it threw him for a moment, although he quickly recovered. As if Tim was careless enough to let his attack be screwed by its own momentum. He wasn’t born yesterday.
On a dime, Tim’s body twisted instinctively, his other hand stabilizing the staff and redirecting the momentum up in a move that was as easy and familiar as breathing, because next his opponent would go into a back handspring, so he needed to plant his feet and prepare to charge—
His staff was slammed into the ground by a pair of heavy boots, painfully wrenching his shoulders. Jarred, Tim looked up and found the barrel of a gun inches from his face.
He flipped back, tugging the corner of his cape up to obscure his outline as he flew.
A few shots tore the air around him and at least two hit home.
Tim had managed to put enough distance between them that the reinforced kevlar held, but only barely. He"d have some serious bruising to look forward to later if he didn"t die.
Hood abandoned the gun and approached like a tiger.
Tim’s eyes found his staff behind his opponent, no longer pinned but just as unreachable, and frowned.
For a second, it was almost like…but that didn"t make any sense.
Why had he thought—?
No.
That wasn"t the question.
The real question, the one that might keep him alive tonight, was: Just how incomplete was Tim"s understanding of his opponent?
Reports on The Red Hood, the files they had in the cave, had not described anything like this. The constant shift from weightless grace to slamming force had Robin feeling like a mouse with a needle-sword trying to fight off an eagle.
None of his hits were landing. It was like Hood knew where he was going to aim before he did.
One thing the records had noted was Hood"s propensity for obnoxious trash talk.
Tim blithely batted away snide comments about his form, his mother, his hairstyle, his team, his mentor, all intended to rile him up and disturb his focus. Tim blocked him out, focusing trying (and failing) to get a punch in, until—
"I mean, how many of you little bastards killing yourselves is it going to take before he gets a clue?"
—fury and grief screamed through Tim"s veins, breaking his concentration. “Keep your mouth off Robin." It comes out quiet and furious. How dare he? How fucking dare he?
“Oh? Is that little incident still a sensitive subject?”
“He was a hero,” Tim snarled, “and you have no right—”
His momentary rage cost him. He was caught in a painful grip around his throat and his back struck the wall hard enough to stun him for a single, crucial second. The one handed grip became two, and shifted, and squeezed.
Tim swallowed down a mouth full of air, braced his feet against the wall, and took stock.
The pressure was only on his windpipe, not his arteries. Oxygen was still getting to his brain just fine, even if it wasn’t reaching his lungs.
That was good. That meant he had minutes to break the grip instead of seconds.
"I have every right." Hood hissed mechanically. "Don"t be naive. The moment you put on a mask and go looking for trouble, you"re anyone"s game."
Tim jerked in his grip, baring his teeth, furious but unable to act rashly or get angry. If he wanted to maintain consciousness for as long as physically possible, he needed to keep his heart rate down and his mind clear.
"Do you think anything about this is sacred?" Hood laughed. It was a cruel sound. "I’ll say whatever I damn well please." Tim stared passively at his own taught expression, reflected in the gleaming red as Hood leaned close. “I’ll do whatever I damn well please.”
Tim tried to keep himself calm, but couldn"t help but tremble slightly, from fear, from anger, as the sickening reality of what was really going on began to dawn on him.
This was all some…ploy by C-List rogue to make a name for himself: Hoping to follow in the Joker’s footsteps and kill a Robin of his own.
It didn’t quite gel with Hood’s previous motivations, which must be the only reason Tim was still frozen in his grip. He’d just thought— he"d read the file. The Red Hood had seemed—No. A few floating rumors of a new clean needle program and helping the working girls unionize didn’t hold a candle against the mounting evidence in front of him. The evidence that plainly stated that, despite—everything—Hood was just another monster.
Well. That, at least, solved the mystery of why this rabid bastard called himself Red Hood in the first place.
Obviously. Why else come here, with that name, if the use of a moniker that already carried the connotation of Robin-Killer wasn’t crisply, bitterly intentional?
It also explained the fighting style, to some degree. He’d clearly been researching them, somehow; studying how they moved, how they fought.
It was plain now that Tim took a second to actually think.
Hood fought like Dick. Uncannily so. However he’d learned it, Hood was somehow using one of the most exclusive fighting styles on the planet like it was easy.
Whatever that meant—Tim couldn"t focus on whatever that meant esoterically right now. What does that mean in this moment?
Hood could fight like Robin. Hood could beat Robin.
To win this fight, Tim would need to be someone else.
A short-form plan started to take shape in the back of his mind.
Robin moved in inches, curling his hands behind his back, holding his palms and fingers against the wall while running his knuckles along his utility belt, pressing gently against the pouches to feel for the precise tools he needed.
From the front, it looked like he was trying and failing to push himself up the wall and relieve the pressure on his neck. Good. Let Hood think he was scrambling.
Tim closed his eyes, trying to focus. Drawing on old, old training that Bruce had never preferred. Twisting tight to form an unbreakable defense. Attacking and vanishing like an unyielding shadow. Snake-like. A form perfectly balanced and perfectly deadly.
"Gonna roll over and die?" Hood jeered. "Not so different from the last one, are you? You"d think Batman would have stepped up his standards."
White hot anger burned through him just as his eyes flashed open, zeroing in on a still-healing wound peeking over Hood"s neckline.
Weakness.
Hood let go with one hand and reached toward the opposite collar, saying something that Tim didn"t care to listen to and preparing to do…something Tim didn"t care to wait for.
Robin attacked. He twisted, braced his feet against the wall, pulled the batarang from his belt and sliced through Hood’s holster with a single, powerful sweep. With his other hand, he deployed the collapsible staff from his utility belt to send Hood"s array of firearms clattering across the room, entirely out of reach.
The hand holding the batarang continued its upward momentum and then twisted; Robin drove his heavily armored right elbow into the angry inflammation decorating the left side of Hood’s exposed neck.
A strangled cry rang out and the single hand still wrapped around his throat loosened its grip enough for Tim to break free.
Tim gasped down a breath of air even as he readied his stance and launched his attack.
Hood had sprung back, hand pressed against his neck as the wound, whatever it was, started to bleed again. He scrambled to avoid this new attack, snatching up the Bo he had stolen at the beginning of the fight and raising it to defend himself.
Tim didn"t wait for Hood to ready his weapon before his next swing, vicious, angry, calculated to harm.
“I said," Tim bared his teeth as Hood looked at him with a newfound wariness, “to keep Robin out of your goddamn mouth."
He watched the blood weep sluggishly from Hood"s wounded neck and aimed with the intent to reopen it further.
Hood was stronger.
Tim was better.
He had intentionally abandoned the careful, corralling forms of Robin and instead leaned on what he"d been taught during his sabbatical in Paris. He let his weapon and body flow together in perfect unison. His staff was less a tool to be wielded and more a natural extension of his reach as his attacks grew exponentially in speed, in sharpness. In viciousness.
He shifted seamlessly between heavy and light, throwing his full weight behind a blow and vanishing into air a moment later, already spinning, already setting up his next attack and giving his opponent no room to recover, let alone retaliate.
It was subtle, barely-there, but to a trained eye it was undeniable: Hood was struggling to keep up.
Tim"s only job here was to win; he left the responsibility of not being killed entirely in Hood"s court.
It left Tim more space to focus.
But this flurry of attacks wasn"t exactly effortless, no matter how effective. Sweat was soaking his hair and dripping into his eyes. His breathing rasped harshly in his sore throat.
The fight continued, Tim watchful and deadly, Hood furious and outclassed.
Deftly, Tim feinted to one side. Hood"s arm swung out in a wide arc, aiming to shatter a sternum that was no longer there to be hit, and unconsciously revealing a small gap in his otherwise incredibly thorough body armor. Just the sort of slip Tim had been counting on. Or praying for. Same difference.
Just under the left arm, perpendicular to the sternum. A place that was hard to hit, clumsy to aim for, and not especially worth the hassle for the damage dealt. Not worth the added padding, really, unless you’re going up against the area’s foremost expert in a particular sort of lightweight, mid-range, blunt-force weapon. But what were the chances of that happening?
Gliding forward with the speed and fluidity of a viper, Tim forced the end of his bo staff into the pressure point that had just been revealed. He felt a grim sort of satisfaction as Hood"s right arm promptly fell limp and useless to his side, the bo staff he’d been slamming around like a baseball bat dropping from his numb fingers.
Hood’s right hand snapped out and caught the weapon before it could clatter to the floor.
Tim grimaced. Even injured, this guy"s reflexes were seriously unreal.
They faced each other, panting. The Red Hood"s harsh, mechanized breaths echoed loudly in the otherwise silent room. Louder, even, than Tim’s own frantic heartbeat.
“You’re going to regret that, you little rat," he growls, low and acidic and full of promise.
Hood was furious now, swinging with a newfound speed and power that made him dangerous.
The sensation of being cornered seemed to have activated something in his hindbrain, and he fought like a man running out of options, and more hindered by his stolen weapon than helped.
Fighting one handed with a staff was never ideal, but he couldn"t risk abandoning it, because then Robin might get it back. And he had proven himself deadly enough with the weapon that even the possibility was a threat.
Hood was stuck swinging the bo like a meat cleaver, like a sword. It should have been the definition of a losing strategy, but the blows were powerful, so powerful that the force of blocking Hood"s wildest swings sent shockwaves rattling up Robin"s arms.
Hood was definitely, somehow, stronger and faster than before.
Tim needed every scrap of skill and training he possessed to combat it. But he was combating it.
Right now, Tim still had the upper hand.
Hood kept going. One-armed.
He didn"t know a thing about Hood"s stamina, but his momentum didn"t seem to be faltering at all.
Tim just needed a way to end this now and then figure out what the hell Hood had done to this team.
That pressing need at the forefront of his mind, he danced back a few steps, blocking swings at corners and odd angles to prevent the force from hurting his shoulders and rendering the attack painfully easy to avoid.
This had the benefit of seriously pissing off his opponent as well as giving Tim the opportunity to fall back on his training.
There was a way to win this fight right now. He just needed to find it.
He stopped looking at Hood like a threat and instead surveyed the scene like a math problem.
Hood moved like Robin. What did that mean?
Set aside your feelings and think, A voice that sounded a little like Bruce and a little like Tim and a whole lot like Lady Shiva whispered in his head. Ignore whatever it may mean to you and think, what does it mean to this fight?
His eyes snapped clear. A light, acrobatic fighting style meant that Hood was able to move quickly and with a greater range of motion than most street-level body armor typically allowed for. That speed was hampered now, as Hood was forced to fight one-handed with an unfamiliar weapon just to keep it out of Tim"s hands.
Hood had gambled for maneuverability.
Maneuverability meant give.
Robin led the dance flawlessly, allowing Hood to believe he was successfully backing them into a small doorway, and waited for a furious lunge to take Hood"s arm over the threshold. Tim dropped out of the position and instead let the momentum slide past him, letting Hood"s power take him the slightest bit off balance and
Tim
slammed the door on Hood"s shoulder, braced the wooden weapon with his own metal one, and threw all his weight in the opposite direction. There was a sickening snap of breaking bone as Hood arm gave under the force.
It was brutal, but necessary. Hood needed to go down, and no matter how strong he was, he couldn"t hope to win this fight with no working arms.
There was a moment of silence, filled only with the sound of Tim panting. Hood wasn"t making any sound at all.
And then he was, and that"s when everything went wrong.
With a scream of fury, Hood, with his previously paralyzed hand, somehow punches. Through. The wooden door.
Both staves were ripped out of Robin"s hands with a force that should not be possible with an arm that should not be moving.
Not just strong, then. Enhanced strength. With enhanced healing.
Tim had miscalculated.
A grip at the junction of his neck and shoulder was as painful as it was inescapable, the jitter of cut off nerves made his trapped arm tremble.
An armored knee is driven sharply into his lower back, pushing a hoarse, strangled scream out of his mouth, his stomach swooping with a sudden nausea and dizziness and a pain so acutely overwhelming that he nearly blacked out.
As it was, when his awareness returned to him he was flat on his stomach, frozen on the ground and struggling to catch his breath.
A cheap fucking kidney shot. The kind he hadn"t been taken down by since he was twelve.
When he saw Hood stand and approach him, armed with both staves now, he couldn"t get enough air to even try to speak, let alone crawl to safety.
Hood loomed over him, unnervingly silent. He knelt down and rolled Tim over onto his back with a cruel gentleness. Politely, he ignores the dry breathless rattle that is the best approximation of a scream that Tim can force out at the pressure of his own weight.
Hood tilted his head to the side and wordlessly considered him.
It was exactly as frightening as it was intended to be.
Hood hefted the two staves, considered them, and then snapped the wooden one into two pieces over his knee. He picked up a particularly jagged chunk and flipped back Tim"s cape to expose his thighs and torso.
He knelt down to feel along Tim"s side, knocking away Tim"s attempts to block him with laughable ease.
—He still couldn"t move, he was fighting to breathe, trying to coach himself back into deep breaths deep breaths to regain control of his body and fight back before—
Hood found the small rip where a bullet had grazed his side, right under his ribs, on the left side, near the front. Hood pulled the rip wider with careful fingers before he reared back. He plunged the jagged splintered wood deep into the flesh of Tim"s side and twisted.
This time, Tim actually did black out.
When he gasped himself back into fear and adrenaline, he"s being dragged by his ankle across the floor.
Hood’s broken arm is hanging at an unnatural angle at his side, the metal staff clutched between those purpling fingers as though he couldn"t even feel it.
They headed toward the open air stairwell and stopped right by the ledge.
Hood looked down at him. "Hey, brat." The helmet did not allow for expression, but Tim could hear enough contempt in the tone to get the picture just fine.
"You think being Robin makes you a hero?"
Tim couldn"t find the air to respond even if he’d wanted to. He was hurting. He was terrified.
"Tell me," Hood roughly nudged the side of Tim"s face with his boot. "Do you feel like a hero right now?"
Hood faced him, raising the metal staff over his head, and Tim tensed for the blow.
Hood cocked his head with a snort. "Made you look." He opened his hand and they both listened to the clatter as it fell all six stories, hitting rails and walls with unpleasant clangs all the way down.
Hood wrapped his hand around Robin"s ankle again and he understood what was about to happen to him with sickening clarity.
Tim was slung over the side headfirst, hauled and hung so that the single-handed grip on his ankle was the only thing preventing him from becoming a nasty red stain on the ground-level concrete.
"Well, hero?" Hood gave him a little shake. "Still feeling tough?"
The annoying posturing actually gave Tim a little of his air back. “You think I’ve never been threatened by a sanctimonious creep in a stupid hat before?" Tim rasped. "Are you sure you’re from Gotham?”
The pain in his back was a cloying, sickening ache that lapped at the corners of his vision, but his real concern was the snapped off hunk of splintered wood was still lodged in his abdomen, dripping blood down onto his chin and face as he dangled there. He tensed his abs, locking his muscles in place to hold it, and it burned grindingly bright for a moment before easing off slightly. Just enough that he could breathe. That he could think.
In the meantime, Hood was still chattering away. Presumably for his own benefit, because Tim was honestly only barely paying attention. "...Famous Gotham urban legend, you know. Can Batman and Robin really fly? Want to take a guess—"
Tim threw a batarang right at his stupid shiny face and, predictably, was dropped.
Stupid problems, Simple solutions. Tim stretched out a practiced hand to catch the railing one floor below and simply swung himself onto the balcony a floor down.
Oh, but that had not felt good.
His side burned at the exertion even as he did his best to keep that part of his body locked and stabilized.
The Red Hood was now far less of a threat than the hunk of stick still inside of him.
There weren"t a lot of options when he was being dangled a hundred feet off the ground. Here, with space, it was a gamble. Risk leaving it in and tearing him up further, or pull it out and risk fainting from blood loss.
Right now, an unconscious Robin was a dead Robin. But, with it in, he could barely move.
Tim lowered himself to the floor carefully, leaning with his back against the railing and prepping his tiny first aid kit.
This was such a bad idea. A horrible idea.
He yanked the largest chunk out of his own body with a nauseating squelch, and shoved a wad of bandages deep into the wound before securing the whole mess with duct tape.
It wasn’t good, it wasn"t smart, it wouldn"t last. But it would have to do. It would have to be good enough because there was nothing else.
Much in the same way Tim would have to be good enough because there was nothing else standing between his friends and a frighteningly capable murderer.
Hood swung down after him, swearing up a blue streak.
Tim, having mostly recovered from amateur surgery hour, threw a knockout gas cannister at the center of his chest. The force of the tiny explosion almost pushes Hood back over the edge. Almost.
Dammit.
Even the smoke didn"t help. Hood"s helmet mechanisms engaged with a click, filtering the air for him and rendering Tim"s efforts meaningless and a tool wasted.
Tim was running as best he could, holding his side, desperate to cook up a plan. Any plan.
Think. Think. What do you know?
Hood was bigger and stronger than him. Hood could neutralize an alarming percentage of Tim"s moveset. Hood had automatic air filtration, super strength, and far fewer injuries.
Hood wanted to kill him.
Tim needed to not let him do that.
Don"t die was vague and unhelpful as far as short term goals go, though, so Tim forced himself to save the panic clawing at his chest for later. Now. What does it mean for this fight?
Super strength. Bad.
Air filtration. Inconvenient.
Super healing. Really bad.
No guns? Thanks, past Tim.
Flexible armor. Not that he needs it.
Air filtration—
Tim stopped. Eyes flashing wide. He spun on as much of a dime as his awkward gait could manage and took off toward the 5th floor workshop.
It was crazy. It might not work. It was probably his only chance of getting out of here alive.
It was his friends" only chance of not getting murdered in their beds tonight.
The door to Victor"s old workshop was analogue, he used to joke. No power grid required. The room itself was smaller, more cobbled-together than the official labs and garages downstairs. He"d preferred getting his special brand of first aid in here as opposed to, as he"d say with a laugh,"waiting his turn in line behind the ray guns and motorcycles."
More importantly, it was where he managed his own upgrades and equipment.
Cyborg and Robin III had never been on the same team together, technically, but sometimes when Nightwing (and therefore the Titans) had babysitting duty for the weekend, he"d let a tiny Robin poke his nose in and pester him with questions for a few hours.
But never, of course, without firm and thorough instructions on lab safety and the appropriate gear and what to do in case of an emergency and how he wasn"t to be in here without supervision every single time he came within ten feet of the door.
The Titans had all been so careful with him, in those early days. Tim wasn"t stupid; he knew why.
He did his best not to think too hard on it right now, about how a now-grown Victor would react if he died in this room, how, oh god, how Dick would react if he died in this tower—
No. No time for any of that.
Focus on the plan.
He successfully popped the lock and the familiar door swung open.
The room sent a spike of nostalgia through him, despite the evidence of going untouched for at least a few years.
A grid-like arrangement of work tables, each with a different focus and all now mostly empty save for chunks of scrap and rusted tools long unused. A few peeling posters left on the walls from bands Vic had only liked as a teenager. A little stool, now missing a leg, that Tim had loyally peppered with novelty stickers of Batman and later, less loyally, Yu Yu Hakusho characters.
Tim ignored the debris, instead heading for the part of the workshop he knew best; the safety gear. He circled the room, gathering the fire extinguishers in his arms and snatching the largest screwdriver he could pinpoint on the messy, dusty work desks.
He had only just wrapped his fingers around the true safety measure, the one he had been trained for in case something went seriously, seriously wrong, the one Victor had taught him to take apart and put together and even build his own—
—his own haphazard recreation, which would still be here even if Victor had taken everything important with him when he"d left—
—when the dull thunk of a familiar set of boots met his ears.
They faced each other for an endless second: Tim hunched over a pile of fire extinguishers with a homemade EMP clutched in one hand and a screwdriver in the other; the Red Hood looming like the Masque of Death in the doorway, unarmed. He didn"t need to be armed to take Tim apart.
There was no more time to plan.
Hood took a single step forward.
Shoving the EMP in his pocket,Tim swung the screwdriver up over his head with both hands, spared a single, fleeting a thought for how incredibly angry a teenage Victor would be at him for what he was about to do, and slammed the point down and into the careful stack of extinguishers with all his strength, piercing at least two of them with that one blow.
The room exploded in white.
Abandoning the screwdriver, Tim clutched one of the unbroken extinguishers to his chest and darted silently to a new position at a defensible corner of the room, listening for the clatter of those heavy boots to guide his next move. He kept his breathing light and shallow, to avoid breathing in too much of the powder in the air and alerting his opponent both.
No matter how keenly he strained his ears, he heard nothing.
No breathing, no footsteps, no bumping into tables. Nothing but the soft hiss of air from the destroyed equipment.
Was Hood not moving? His footsteps had been so loud before. Or maybe it was a trick. Maybe Hood had moved, completely silently, and was waiting for Tim to throw himself at his former position and then be torn to shreds.
He had to find Hood"s location without giving away his own.
There had to be a way.
What do you know? How can you use it?
He fumbled at his utility belt, careful not to make a sound, and extracted his one remaining canister of knockout gas.
Tim took a deep breath and held it. Quietly, carefully, he set it on a timed delay and rolled it out into the center of the room.
The dull hiss blended with the pre-existing cacophony seamlessly.
And then. At his ten o"clock, about eight feet away, he heard it: the soft click as Hood"s air filtration system automatically re-engaged.
Bingo.
Tim hefted his fire extinguisher and charged in swinging.
Literally swinging the fire extinguisher, clocking that helmet with clang of metal on metal, and again, and again before Hood could dodge or move or figure out what Tim was up to.
He wasn"t swinging at random, now. His plan required heavily denting the mask in three key places: behind the left ear, square under the chin, just beneath the right temple.
He had skittered safely out of arm"s reach within 8 seconds of that click.
He didn"t have time to congratulate himself, or hesitate, or even catch his breath. The next step of his plan needed to happen now, before Hood moved or the air started to clear.
He blasted him once in the face with the extinguisher before diving back in.
The blast had disoriented Hood, as it was meant to, but he"d also given away his position.
Tim had hoped his luck would hold out, but Hood was ready for him this time. it shouldn"t have been a surprise. Those blows to the head were barely enough to stun.
"You little SHIT!"
But Tim got lucky: The first attack missed. Too much anger.
He ducked under the arm and channeled the EMP directly into Hood’s lumpy, malformed, untracked helmet.
The second attack did not miss. Hood caught him in the ribs with a powerful kick that packed so much force that Tim had the momentary, irrational fear that his torso would give and Hood"s foot would come clean out the other side. That didn"t happen, obviously, but he was thrown bodily from the workshop through the still-open door, landing with a painful and unfortunate crunch.
Thankfully, he"d had enough time to twist so that his stab wound didn"t take the brunt of the kick or the landing. Tim staggered to his feet, blinking stars out of his vision.
He sprinted as fast as he could down the corridor, tossing his remaining extinguisher and tools aside.
If this plan worked, it was only a matter of winning a very deadly game of keep-away; he didn"t need anything slowing him down.
He just had to run. He couldn"t afford to wait around and see. If it worked it worked. If it didn"t…
Tim didn"t want to think about what would happen if it didn"t.
His side burned. Despite his efforts, the wound was definitely still bleeding. But it would be fine.
Hood wouldn"t be able to keep pace with him forever and he didn"t have any projectiles left.
Tim didn"t have to be fast. He just had to stay out of arm"s reach.
A familiar ka-thunk behind him was his only warning before a grappling hook sunk into his calf, wrapping around his shin like a clawed hand.
Tim was no stranger to pain. He had felt all sorts of novel sensations in his short life; certainly more than most kids his age.
Tim was also a pretty good guesser. If given time to think it over, his closest approximation to how this particular sensation felt would be something like stepping into a bear trap.
It was beyond excruciating.
Then the line began to retract.
He twisted, grabbed the line with his right hand to prevent the force from being translated directly through his leg. He knew intimately how much force a grapple needed. Best case scenario it would peel flesh from bone and drag it back to his pursuer. Worst case scenario, it would catch bone and possibly tear the leg clean off.
He ignored the nauseating seething excruciating everything to fumble for his belt. He had to cut the line, he"d die if he didn"t, but his hands were shaking too badly. His fingers were too slippery with blood from grasping at the iron cable to get a grip.
Tim"s final batarang tumbled uselessly from his fingers.
There was nothing he could do as the sharp wire bit into the flesh of both his hands. it retracted with a sickeningly familiar whir and he was helplessly, painfully dragged to the Red Hood"s feet.
Aggravated bruises sent pulses of pain through him that were so acute his whole body was trembling.
He landed at Hood"s feet, staring up helplessly into a shade of red so burned into his brain that he doubted he"d ever see it the same way again.
And then.
The fingers around the grapple gun slackened as Hood dropped it, instead using the hand to support himself against the wall. Tim snatched the tool up and scrambled backward, pressing the familiar buttons to release the claw hooks around his leg, and looked up.
Relief bubbled like love in his chest, and he didn"t move to run. He didn"t need to.
Because a soft sound was coming from the direction of Hood"s battered helmet. And that sound told him it had worked.
He didn"t need to go anywhere; he"d already won.
The voice was muffled, almost boyish, and completely human. That told Tim two things: The helmet had no power, and the helmet wasn"t coming off.
Tim tried to stagger to his feet, failed, settled for leaning hard against a wall a few scarce feet from the entrance to the 5th floor infirmary, and hunkered in to watch Hood"s pitiful approach.
He was still using the wall for support, and whatever threats he was spouting were near impossible to make out without the built-in speaker.
The speaker, of course, wasn"t the point. It was just a bonus.
The point was the now-compromised air filtration system. The system that had automatically engaged when Tim had gassed the room, and was still engaged when Tim had knocked out the power.
Because lack of power didn"t make the helmet any less airtight.
Hood was working with a limited supply of oxygen, and had absolutely, definitely noticed by now.
But that didn"t matter because Tim had changed the shape of the helmet just enough that it couldn"t be removed.
The heavy, armored body collapses to the ground, fingers pressing the same patterns at the base of the helmet over and over again to no avail.
It almost sounded like he was crying.
Tim watches impassively as, without fanfare, the Red Hood tipped over onto his side, first clawing at his helmet, then clawing at his neck, and then just twitching, before finally falling still.
He"d done it. He"d actually done it.
He"d won.
But he didn"t have time to celebrate it. Specifically, Hood didn"t.
He hadn"t led Hood to this part of the corridor to beat him. He"d brought him here to save him.
Tim crawled over, sat up on his knees, and gave Hood"s limp form a shove with his good hand.
He didn"t know how he was going to do this. Hood was huge and heavy without the armor, and Tim"s muscles felt like jello. Maybe it was the simple desperation that did it.
He"d put in far too much work into bringing Hood down safely, non-fatally, to let the guy choke to death in his own stupid helmet. His eyes scanned the floor around them for anything he could use. When he lit upon something that could only very loosely be called an option, he actually winced.
"Well, waste not want not," he muttered, hefting the grappling gun, "and it"s not like he hesitated to use it on me."
Tim fired the hook a few scarce inches from hitting the meat of Hood"s shoulder and let the line of cord rattle out from the gun onto the floor (“Because I’m not evil,” he told his uncaring audience.). He wound it a few turns around one of Hood’s stupid big shoulders and limped toward the 5th floor medical bunker, unspooling wirecord as he went.
Rounding the corner, he pulled the cord taut before activating the retractor on the lowest level, dragging Hood"s unconscious form down the hallway and into the bunker.
It took effort, but he managed to get Hood inside and maneuver him over to a lowered gurney bolted directly to the floor. Tim strapped him in tightly, taking care to use the special medical restraints they use for Cassie and Kon. He was not taking any chances with that super strength.
He locked the single infirmary door behind him with code Panic Room. The door would not open from the inside for anyone, not even him, and Batman and Nightwing both automatically received location alerts as soon as the code is input. It was something Tim had designed himself. Originally, it had been intended as a last ditch effort to shelter him and his teammates from invaders without locking said invaders inside with him, but. As far as he knew, his friends were still unconscious. As far as he knew, Hood was still dangerous.
This would keep them safe no matter what. Even if something happened to Tim, the team would be safe.
He struggled back over to the gurney and raised it. Tim dragged over a rolling chair to pull his workshop together. After checking one last time that the straps were secure, he started on the helmet.
First things first: He pressed his fingers against Hood"s neck to find a light and fluttering pulse. He let out a sigh of relief.
Killing was still against the code, after all.
Tim checked his watch. Eight minutes since he was cut off, four minutes since unconsciousness. Hood was still technically in the clear, but time was running out fast. He slipped the sturdy gloves off of Hood"s hands and put them on his own.
Fighting exhaustion to stay focused, Tim tapped through the sequence he saw the man himself desperately fumbling through before, but this time wedged a screwdriver between two plates to catch the momentary gap that appeared.
With his other hand, he heated the metal with the tiny soldering iron from his utility belt, softening it just enough to peel back the dented section on the left side of his head. This offered enough give for the manual release to finally take effect.
Even with the thorough insulation, the proximity to hot metal probably burned Hood"s face and neck a little. Tim couldn"t bring himself to give a shit.
Heaving a sigh, he gave the dead, crumpled helmet a firm tug, and it slid off to reveal a far-too-young man sporting a domino mask astoundingly similar to the one on Tim"s own face.
What in the world?
Tim plucked curiously at the corner, but it was stuck on with an unnervingly familiar tackiness.
When Tim spun in his chair to get supplies, his eyes caught on the blood-covered grappling hook. The one that had been so similar to his own that his fingers had found the correct buttons without needing to think about it.
Slowly, eyes tracking the drip of blood from the clawed hook to the floor, he extracted a small sample of the solvent he used to get off his own mask.
There was no way this would work.
The edge came up easily. Tim dropped the mask back into place after less than an inch had been removed, unsettled and brain churning, trying to determine what in the world was going on.
Is it possible Hood had pilfered gear from the tower before attacking? Or—wait.
He found himself struck with a possibility he had not yet considered: Was this actually the same Red Hood as the one in Gotham?
The behavior was highly erratic as well as on the opposite side of the country from where Hood operates.
He had the domino. He had the fucking grapple, identical to the one sitting in Tim"s locker back in Gotham.
None of this was making sense.
And..that jaw. There was something so, so familiar about the line of that jaw.
Tim reached for the mask again, working it off. He needed to know.
And the face that was revealed…that brow, those eyelashes, that nose…all of it was beginning to look horribly familiar.
Trembling, Tim ran a gentle hand through the sweaty, gray-streaked hair and flopped it over the stranger"s forehead. No longer slicked back with blood and sweat (though still containing plenty of both), the hair settled into a more boyish style, falling with a slight curl and a middle part, exactly the way it used to.
Jason Todd.
It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Tim"s heart thudded painfully in his chest.
Jason Todd was the Red Hood.
He needed to tend to his own wounds. He needed to call Batman. He needed to find out what happened to his team. He needed to get a grip—
Jason Todd was alive.
Tim did none of those things. Instead, he dropped like a stone into the chair beside—beside the body and buried his face in his hands.
Jason Todd had tried to kill him.
Tim"s breath hitched. Once, then twice.