James! Is that a weed!?
***
(Continuing previous chapter Peters POV {18/10/2014})
Peter’s breath hitched as he took a step back, his gaze fixed on the crudely drawn scarecrow symbol on the paper in his hand. His fingers tightened around the bag of flyers as a chill swept through him, the ocean breeze doing little to mask the growing sense of unease.
“A scarecrow?” he repeated under his breath, heart thudding in his chest.
The name conjured an unsettling memory from a few days ago–fragments of whispered conversations he had overheard while weaving through Gotham’s crowded streets in search of work. Something about a rise in flea gas attacks in the Narrows, about the infamous Scarecrows’s influence spreading beyond Arkham’s walls.
He hadn’t paid much attention then, chalking it up to typical Gotham rumours within psycho city. But now, standing in front of this decaying fisherman’s outlet, it felt all too real.
Peter hesitated, the weight of the envelope in his pocket suddenly heavier. His rational side screamed for him to turn around and leave–this wasn’t his business, and he didn’t owe anyone anything.
But he couldn’t ignore the gnawing curiosity or the chance of earning triple pay for what seemed like a simple drop-off. Steeling himself, he reached for the door handle, finding it stiff but not locked. The hinges groaned as he pushed it open, the sound echoing through the eerily silent space.
The interior was dimly lit, the weak rays of sunlight filtering through cracked windows. Barley enough to see by, dust hung in the air disturbed by his every step.
He took a cautious glance around. The space looked abandoned—rusted fishing tools lay scattered across workbenches, and nets hung limply from the walls and ceilings. But as Peter moved deeper inside, he caught sight of something distinctly out of place: a collection of glass vials arranged on a table in the far corner, filled with a swirling, sickly yellow substance.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. “Fear gas?” he whispered, his voice barely audible.
Before he could think of what to do, the door slammed shut behind him, his blood ran cold. The sudden sound jolted him into action. He spun around, only to see a shadowed figure leaning against the doorframe, their outline barely visible in the now dim light. “Curious delivery boy, aren’t you?” the figure drawled, their voice low and taunting.
Peter froze his instances screaming at him to run, but his feet remained rooted to the spot. “I-I was just dropping something off, he stammered raising his hands defensively. “I didn’t mean to snoop.”
The figure stepped forward, their face still obscured by the dim light, but Peter could feel the weight of their gaze. “Funny how curiosity works, isn’t it? It makes you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
Peter’s eyes darted to the vials on the table, his mind racing. Whoever this was, they weren’t here to exchange pleasantries. “Look, I’ll just leave the envelope and go, alright?” He reached into his pocket slowly, holding up the sealed letter as a peace offering.
The figure tilted their head, as if considering his words, before letting out a low chuckle. “Oh, you’ll leave something, alright.” They stepped fully into the light, revealing a gas mask slung around their neck and a crude patch stitched into their jacket–a scarecrow symbol identical to the one on the door.
Peter’s pulse skyrocketed. Whoever this was, they weren’t just some random thug. They were connected to Scarecrow. He took a cautious step back, mentally mapping out the quickest route to the door. “I think I got the wrong place,” he said, trying and failing to keep his voice steady. “I-I’ll just go.”
Before he could make a move, the figure lunged, their hand shooting out to grab his wrist. “Oh no, you’re exactly where you need to be, little delivery boy,” they sneered. “After all, curiosity killed the cat, no?”
Peter hurriedly yanked his wrist out of the estranged man’s grasp as his Spidey-sense tingled up the back of his neck, filling him with anxiety. The emotion so overbearing as just the amount of danger he’d stumbled across came to light.
In his momentary distraction the opposing thug pulled an arm back and socked Peter in the face. Hard. Blood began to flow from his nose like a faucet whilst Peter flinched back even more, now gargling a little on the blood dripping down his throat from his assaulted sinuses.
“What the hell man!?” He exclaimed, shuffling away from the threat. His hands cradling his bleeding nose. He had continued to shuffle backward as the grunt approached him, just as unfriendly as before. If not more.
The scarecrow’s helper merely grinned down at him, although his expression held anger and frustration. “I don’t enjoy taking out my emotions on others, but it's your own fault you twerp.” The man rubbed his hand around the wrist of his fist he’d decked Peter in the face with. “You were supposed to just drop off that letter and leave, it’s not your business to come inside and stroll around as you please.”
“How is it my fault you're doing illegal things?” Peter demanded, dumbfounded by the figure’s sheer obliviousness to the situation. “Also how can it not be my business? I was hired just for this? You're the one hanging out in some shoddy old fishermen's house with fear toxin !” Peter hissed, thrusting an arm out to point at the noxious fluids in vials in the rooms with them.
“Hey, this is my job! What I say goes, it’s your own fault that any of this happened. It’s Gotham, what do you expect?” The man in front of him defended, although he wavered at the mention of the chemicals, turning to them. He reached out, grabbing a nearby thin cloth and strung it over the miniature laboratory.
During the weirdo’s rant, Peter quickly bolted to the door and shoved it open with his shoulder and kicked it shut behind him. The man, from within the shack swore loudly at his escape and burst out the same old scribbled on door.
Peter sprinted down the street, back to the office he—-for the time being called home—-to rid of the man behind him, for his own safety. The scarecrow goon wasn’t too far behind him but far enough that Peter wasn’t too stressed about fleeing. His mind being filled with thoughts about his payment rather than guaranteed evade of the man chasing him.
Peter turned a corner sharply as a means of losing the crook but was quickly rewarded with a full body shudder of anxiety from his spider-sense. ‘Where is that coming from?’ Moments before he could figure out what it was, he hastily slammed into a large stack of old palleting and bricks that littered the alley in front of him.
“Get back here you fucking prat!” The thugs' voice echoed through Gotham’s filthy streets, bouncing off the wall of the Ally Peter was quickly recovering in.
“Crap.” Peter swore, wiping the back of his hand under his nose that had lightened up in its pouring of his blood. ‘ Damnit, how do I get back to my bloody home.’ he hurriedly thought, eyes flickering around the buildings that surrounded him as he climbed over and through the discarded building materials that filled the alley.
He hoisted himself over the alleyways cluttered mess of rotted and malfunctioning junk. Turning over and stumbling through old rubbish in the clear dumpsite of the snicket. The man followed him, his loud and angry footsteps not far behind Peter.
Just as Peter got right to the edge of the junkyard he was escaping through, his ankle caught on an old rubbish bag. The torn and aged plastic cooped itself around his shoes and his foot sunk in. ‘ Just my luck!’ Peter thought, desperately yanking and shaking his leg to free himself.
Scarecrows’s shitwad of a goon was getting so close behind him Peter yelped out at the sheer anxiety his Spidey-sense was sourcing him with at the close and approaching danger. With one final gusto of a jerk, he pulled his leg free and fell over onto his knees at the entrance of the back alley-way.
‘ What the fuck.’ Peter exasperatedly thought, he narrated his confusion through his thoughts as his vision swam and his ears fuzzed. The effects of what he assumed was the fear gas began to take place.
He hurriedly pushed himself back up, throwing his backpack over his shoulder and clambered out onto the street in front of the alley. The approaching man had fallen into the same predicament he had and was swearing like a sailor at Peter. “You stupid fucking kid. You just had to go and snoop like the whiny bitch you are. I’m gonna kill you! I’m gonna fucking kill you! You hear?!” More unsavoury insults left his snivelling mouth as quick as he was jerking his body around to get free from the rubbish dump that laid before them.
Peter decided he’d like to actually get away from this psycho and not fall victim to the whole freeze-up-die-like-a-dumb-teenage-girl-in-a-horror-film and get out of there while he still could. He turned and began to run down the somewhat familiar street back out toward where he could see a more major roundabout and corner-store shops.
Out of the corner of his eye, was the man, fuelled by fury, exit the alley and run toward him. Before he turned his head so that the man would be completely out of sight behind him as he fled, his eyes caught sight of something silver, glinting in the low light of Gotham’s varied streetlights.
Up ahead, Peter heard the sound of people, faint, but still evident of other lurkers around in Gotham’s eccentric nightlife. Up ahead on the log road he was traversing away from the threatening thug, loud, another set of footsteps rang out in the street. ‘ Just what I needed, another criminal to deal with.’
(Hood’s Perspective {18/10/2014})
Jason Todd was used to the chaos of Gotham, but Cape Carmine always had a special way of making his blood boil. Thanks to the amount of not quite fully crime experienced Gothamites and common tourists at the harbour’s, (why anyone would willingly come here beats him) and Park Row’s rogue thugs that made their way into the district, it fuelled for inconvenience, uncalled for crime.
The alleys and streets here carried the stink of desperation, and he made it his personal mission to remind the criminals of this city that there were consequences for preying on the vulnerable.
The low-life in front of him was learning that lesson the hard way. Jason held the man by the collar, slamming him against the crumbling brick wall of an alley. “You think you can stalk a woman, corner her, and no one’s gonna notice?” Jason growled, his voice low and dangerous.
The man whispered, his nose bloody and his hands scrambling to pry Jason’s iron grip off his jacket. “I wasn’t–I wasn’t gonna do anything!”
“Right,” Jason spat, pulling him forward before slamming him back against the wall. “Just a misunderstanding, huh? Funny how those seem to happen a lot around here.” He drew his pistol, pointing it at the man’s kneecap.
“Wait–no! Please!” the man bedded, tears streaming down his face.
Jason pulled the trigger without hesitation. The man screamed, collapsing onto the ground as blood pooled beneath his leg. “Cry all you want,” Jason drawled coldly, holstering his gun. “At least you’re alive to tell the story. Next time, I won’t be so generous.”
Before he could decide where to call the GCPD or let the guy bleed out for a while, Jason froze. A sound carried through the air–sharp, high-pitched, and panicked. A kid’s yelp.
Jason’s head snapped in the direction of the sound, adrenaline spiking. The unmistakable rhythm of running footsteps followed, heavy boots chasing after lighter ones. Someone was being pursued–—and not by anyone with good intentions.
He was moving before he had fully processed the situation, his boots pounding against the pavement. He vaulted over a low fence, cutting through the shadowed alleys of Cape Carmine. The sounds grew louder, the yelp repeating as a second set of footsteps echoed against the cracked pavement.
Jason rounded a corner and caught sight of a scrawny figure ahead–a teenager in a hoodie, clutching a bag against their chest, stumbling as they ran. Behind him, a thug in a scarecrow-emblazoned jacket closed the distance, a crowbar raised in his hand.
Jason didn’t waste time. He raised his pistol and fired, the bullet zipping past the kid and grazing the thug’s shoulder. The man dropped the crowbar with a howl, stumbling to the size. Jason was on him in seconds, driving a fist into his jaw and sending him sprawling to the ground.
“Who do you work for?” Jason snarled, his boot pressing into the man’s chest.
“S-Scarecrow!” the thug wheezed, clutching at his bleeding shoulder. “It was just a delivery–that bratty kid wasn’t supposed to see–”
Jason knocked him out with a swift strike to the temple. “Yeah, wrong answer.” He turned toward the kid who had crumpled against a wall a few feet away. The bag lay discarded beside him, and Jason realised the kid was trembling uncontrollably, his eyes wide with terror.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Jason said, crouching down and softening his tone. “You’re safe now.” The kid–—Peter–—flinched, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. The teenager's face was gaunt and his waifish look wasn’t complemented by the smeared and splattered blood dripping from his injured nose.
Once he got close enough to the teen he could smell the rustiness of his shocked face. His pupils were blown wide, and there was a wild unfocused look in his strangely glowing amber eyes.
Fear toxin.
“Damn it,” Jason muttered under his breath. His eyebrows rose as the glow in the boy’s eyes intensified. “Hey, kid—listen to me. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real. You’re——”
Peter let out a strangled cry, scrambling to his feet and shoving Jason away. “Get away from me!” he yelled, his voice cracked and raw.
Jason’s hand shot out to steady him, but Peter bolted, stumbling down the alley and running around the corner. “Son of a—” Jason ran a hand through his hair, readying himself to chase after the kid. But before he could move, his comm buzzed in his ear. One notification caught his eye—Oracle.
:: Any updates? Anything from Cape Carmine. Check in. ::
Jason keyed in a quick response. :: Got a kid on fear gas. Glowing eyes. Could use backup. ::
The reply came almost instantly. :: Glowing eyes? Like.. literally glowing? ::
Jason frowned, already moving in the direction the kid had fled. :: Yeah. Blond kid. Skinny. Looks a little like… :: He paused, the odd realisation hitting him.
Barbara’s voice crackled over the comms. “Jason, you’re not going to believe this, but I think I know who that kid is. I met him on the day job. Twice. Once yesterday and for the first time a couple days ago. His name’s Peter, and… he looks a lot like Dick. Weirdly so.”
Jason stopped in his tracks. “You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. I’ll send his picture to some of the others—maybe someone else has seen him.”
“Great,” Jason muttered, wiping a hand down his face. “Because the last thing I needed tonight was to babysit a kid with Dickhead’s face.”
“Good luck!” Barbara quipped.
Jason sighed, holstering his pistol yet again. “Yeah, thanks for that.” He resumed his search, the image of Peter’s terrified expression burned into his mind. Something about the kid nagged at him, like a piece of a puzzle he couldn’t quite fit together.
But one thing was clear: Gotham wasn’t done throwing curveballs at him tonight.