Origin Story 2: Electric Boogaloo

"So," Bluebird starts. "Your missing kid." She races beside Red Hood from rooftop to rooftop. Nightwing is on her other side, looking for all the world entirely in his element leaping over the top of one shit-stained AC unit to the next.

Red Hood is glad his helmet covers his exhausted look. He asks, "What about him?" He's not trying to be short, but that doesn't mean he's trying not to be either. They had already filled her in on the details back at her apartment and it wasn't worth rehashing the basics.

Bluebird just scoffs. This is why he likes her, she doesn't take his shit. "Why come to me? And if you cared enough to come to me, why be so secretive?"

"If it was a secret, we wouldn't'a told you." Nightwing takes this as his turn to scoff, disguised incredibly poorly as a cough that Hood summarily ignores. He continues, "Besides, wanted to know if you recognized him." Hood didn't really expect her to recognize the kid, but there was a chance and that was worth taking. "And, obviously, you pay attention. Figured you would have some kinda intel one way or the other on the street scene in a way civs wouldn't." He glances over to her, catches the way she's very intently staring at the sky in front of them. "I was right, wasn't I?"

Bluebird shrugs (as much as someone can shrug when running at a solid tilt). Her leather jacket may broaden her shoulders somewhat, but it's not quite enough for him to forget she's just another kid.

Nightwing manages to say what Hood had tried and failed to. "We trusted you to have our backs. But not only that, we trust you to help us see this in a way we can't on our own." He sends a warm look over to the teen. "You know these kids in a way we can't, and that's important."

"And you think that this kid might be caught up in what's happening to the others?" She asks them, glossing over the rest of the conversation. Bluebird stops them at a rooftop, one barely lit by the streetlights in the early evening.

As he peers over the side of the roof, Red Hood hears Nightwing comment, "Well, maybe now we do. Hard to say when we don't know how the kid ended up on the roof for certain." If Bluebird replies, Hood doesn't catch it. He's too distracted by the fact that he recognizes where they've stopped, and more than in just the geographical sense.

It's the pawnshop Red Hood checked out last night. Rags 'n Tatters was a staple of the Alley, even the Bowery as a whole to some degree. At least it had been before the original owner died and his son disappeared. Now, some schmuck with breath worse than Grundy's ran the joint and poached off of what was once a good name.

Jason had only gone in there to scope it out because he had caught Red Robin snooping around, obviously casing it out for some reason he neglected to share. All Jason caught onto from a quick poke around in civvies was about what he would assume to see from a shite little pawn shop in the Alley. Aside from a wider assortment of tech than most shops would get, the only thing that smelled fishy was the owner. Hood has no clue why Red was nosing at the place, other than the possible reason that he's generally a nosy prick. Really, it's his main defining feature.

"Alright, you ready?" Nightwing taps a hand on Red Hood's shoulder, a tense grin hinting that Wing feels the creeping clock just as much as Hood does.

The three of them weave their way through the streets between their starting point and Robinson Park. It's like a relay race mixed with a game of hide and seek that nobody actually wanted to play. Gotham streets had an air of hidden misery at the best of times, and at worst a deluge of fear and hatred would permeate the city. As Red Hood crosses the Bowery rooftops, darkened and still soaked from the last melted snowfall in some places, it's hard not to let the creeping sensation of Gotham's worst put him on edge. Missing children was a common tragedy in the city, especially in her more forsaken corners like Crime Alley. And here they were, tiptoeing across the Bowery in fading daylight looking for ghosts.

Every block was full of signs of the homeless, working girls, street deals, the like. It was a red light district in a part of town padded by the fallout of countless vices. There was no clean or safe place they could hope for kids to survive, but Hood knew best of all that kids were stubborn. They'd stay, ground their way through up the pavement like weeds and force the city to give them each and every day. It was clear in the spots they visited. Some were places the kids had carved out for themselves, little hovels and hole-in-the-wall type places that would otherwise deteriorate into true squats if it weren't for the little squirts. Others were places the Red Hood had helped to build up ages ago, some of which he expected would've been gone by now if not for people like Harper. The worst of them were even less than a hole in the wall, an absolute shit dump where the street kids would congregate against what should've been common sense. But he knows common sense didn't work that way on the street.

Red Hood also knows his frustration is palpable by the time the three convene on a roof near Robinson. Sunset was barely an hour ago but the cold is already making a valiant effort to stiffen his joints through the suit. The other two are equally worn both physically and mentally, yet all any of them have to report is a few whispers here and there, some empty spots, and a concerning lack of familiar faces that just confirms what they were already guessing: something was happening on the streets, to the streets. It wouldn't be the first time, but it was the first time in a while that it had gone unnoticed by Hood since he was reinstated.

It burned to know he had failed the Alley. Someone was hurting his kids. And now, another kid disappears right under his nose? It burns.

And not a single whisper of the kid was heard.

A crackle pierces his headset at the same time Nightwing tilts his head and Bluebird flinches, still not quite used to uninvited guest stars.

"Catching the early shift?" The distinctly modified voice is familiar in its ambiguity.

"Heyyy O! How are you?" Nightwing croons over the channel.

"What's up, Oracle?" Bluebird asks, laughing lightly at Nightwing despite her frustration.

A sigh fuzzes through the distortion. "Oh, nothing much. Oddly enough, I just happened to see Wing was hanging out in the Bowery. Of course, when I peeked a little further, I see not one but three birds hopping about on CCTV. Completely unknown to anyone else." A light pause that doesn't feel light at all. "And without letting me know they were in town."

Ah, so Nightwing was really the one getting chewed out, not them as a whole. Good to know.

"Since you're already up and at 'em, let me put you to work."

Hood was ready to argue, to bitch her out and tell her to fuck off, but Nightwing, the bastard, butt in first. "Of course!" His smile was rightfully tense and he looked 'bout ready to shit out a diamond. "What do you need?"

"Other than for you to use your damn phone?" Oracle let the question hang in the air for a moment before she continued, "Just a little 10-32 at a storage facility a few blocks down from your current. Shots fired, call just came in less than two minutes ago. Caller was young, anonymous — sounded nervous."

Red Hood couldn't help the way he perked up. Sure, the 'young' could mean anything from five to twenty-one, but there was a chance. "Where," he ground out through the helmet's voice modulator.

"Bowery Storage, it's the alley behind —"

"Got it." Red Hood was off like a flash through the fading twilight of another frigid Gotham night like it was a fiery sunrise on his heels instead. He heard the other two following but didn't waste the time to discuss. There was a chance. A chance he wouldn't let another kid disappear into the city's dark. That was enough to push him on through the same city blocks he had already crossed so many times today, this week, this lifetime.

Gunshots were still cracking through the air when the three vigilantes dropped down in front of the heavy garage doors of the building. Already open, they showed a bloody scene filled with the scent of smoke.

"O?" Bluebird starts by asking, "Has anyone called for fire yet?"

"Well, does now count?" Oracle replied, bitterness still lacing her tone, if for a different reason.

The three of them rush across the concrete floor, Hood instinctively diving for the older man with a shotgun. The coot is barely upright but still pointing the thing at a red-headed woman who's growling at him from where she lies splayed out on the bloodied floor. Past him, Nightwing rips the pistol from her red-stained hands with a growl of his own. The old man shouts out a guttural, "Bastards!" before he spits a bloodied glob of something at the woman. He rounds on the Red Hood. "Done a real bang-up job, haven't 'cha? Come in here, detainin' me." Hood's already wrestled the gun from the man, but he can hardly wrestle the man himself now with one hand occupied by the obviously modified beaut. He may be old, but a deceptive layer of muscle hides under the ratty utility jacket he has wrapped around him. Oracle belatedly identifies him as the owner (she is absolutely holding a grudge over being left out and she doesn't even know why yet), one Jayne Cobb. It's an awkward struggle to calm or at least move the man, who somehow manages to spit another spatter of blood on the injured man being checked over by Bluebird as Hood drags him away from the fire.

"You've gotta stop that, old man," Hood tries to say somewhat gently while at the same time gripping the man's jacket tight as he hauls him outside.

"Don't get tetchy now, 'less you wanna see what's it like," is the only somewhat coherent response Mr. Cobb deigns to give. The even less coherent ones were a mess of grumbles and curses that bled into something Red Hood could barely recognize. Bluebird and Nightwing had already bound and dragged the two others from the building, where Bluebird thankfully takes over puppy-guard duty so Hood and Nightwing could go back in.

Nightwing runs back into the burning facility alongside him, yelling over the crackle of the fire, "I'll start searching the units, you look in the office!" They split, Hood nearly taking the door to the office off of its hinges when he bursts through.

The office is a glorified shit show. There are papers thrown to the ground, filing cabinets across the whole room with half of the drawers left open, and an overflowing garbage bin that looks one coffee cup away from causing a disaster-level avalanche. The only thing in good condition is the pistol left on the corner of the desk. On the other side of the dark composite desk is the landline with its receiver still lying off to the side. And right behind that is a crumpled-up ball of black fabric.

Please, Hood can't help but think. The hope it is what he thinks feels almost out of proportion.

When Red Hood grabs it, the cloth unfurls into a discarded Superboy tee shirt, rumpled and weathered but obviously too small to be the old man's.

"Wing," he immediately calls into the comm. "He was here."

"Really? Then —"

"Who was there?" Oracle interrupts, equally pissy and filled with obvious, genuine curiosity.

Bluebird, unaware of the deal he had struck with Nightwing and also generally just a lethal bitch, answers, "Missing kid. They've been trying to track him analog but they suck." Fucking ouch.

"Give me a second to snag feeds, I'll catch a trail," Oracle replies with no hesitation. She might be pissed but Hood knows a kid would always supersede that. Hence her expected complaint of, "And why the fuck didn't you just ask me earlier? Analog my fucking ass, you could've done better than that even without me if you took your thumbs outta your —"

"Okay! Thank you, Oracle!" Wing jumps in, the screech of metal coming through both over the comm-link channel and echoing through the building.

Bluebird's voice over the comm is mixed with the sound of incoming sirens. "Heads up, owner says place should be empty. Getting pissy about you searching."

"Yeah," Hood starts, anger and hope bleeding together into some ugly mass of confused frustration. "Well, he obviously didn't know there was a kid in here so sorry if I elect to ignore his ass."

"I have the kid on CCTV 20 minutes ago heading westbound."

"I'll keep searching the building for anyone else," Nightwing says, barely understandable over more ungodly metal screeches. "Hood, you go after him."

"Way ahead of you," Hood answers, already out the door and barreling onto the streets, past Bluebird and the merry face of Jayne Cobb. Up, back onto the rooftops and propelled by the momentum of the grappling hook, Red Hood races blindly westward before Oracle starts to direct him.

Her voice is androgynous through the modulator, choppy and overlayed with various re-pitches of itself, but Hood will always be able to hear Babs' signature snark through it all. "So, any particular reason I was unnecessarily left out of the loop when you so obviously needed my help. Like usual?"

"I'll kiss up later. Where am I going, O?"

Nightwing's dramatically screeched, "You better not kiss up anyth—!" gets thankfully cut off as his comm is cut separate from the channel.

"He just disappeared into Robinson Park."

The Red Hood swore profusely as he jumped narrow gaps between buildings. How in the fuck did he get so far behind? "Please tell me you're not blind."

"Not entirely, but damn near," Oracle growled. Her sigh was turned into something entirely other in the distortion, but he felt it all the same. "One of Ivy's conditions was lowered surveillance. All of our cameras are gone, but the city's are still on public works buildings." The pause in the comm link was filled with the sound of heavy boots thundering on rooftops, typical bat-stealth be damned. No one would hear him over the raucous sounds of the night crowd filtering in unless he suddenly decided to travel guns blazing.

And anyone who does notice can rightly fuck off.

"Any sign of him in the park then?" Hood is barely two blocks away now, but each step left feels like a mile to cross. He doesn't know why, why it is that this desperation has been haunting this hunt for the kid. He would do it for anyone, but this ache, the need for it to be him who finds the kid. If he had a therapist maybe they would say it was because it was what he wished B would have done for him, would have made it one time, pushed a little harder, a little faster, just made it in time before it was too late. Thank fuck he doesn't have a therapist.

Oracle cuts through his mild spiral before he can trip over his own feet in the mental collapse. "A possible glimpse in one of the cameras. Northern side of the reservoir, angle from the north-east side of pump station B."

"So cut North."

"Yes, 'cut North.'"

"Thanks O," Hood says with genuine gratitude.

Of course, Oracle stamps that gratitude down more than a little when she asks, "Oh yeah? Thankful enough to explain why you didn't call in a situation where objectively you should have and you typically would have?"

Hood grimaces under the helmet. More than that, he feels the verdant anger seep in. "Fuck off. I do plenty without your help and I've obviously never needed any of you chucklefucks to get the job done when it mattered most."

"Yeah, because you're such an independent and emotionally stable king right now."

"Maybe I'd talk to you if you weren't such a harping snitch," he growls out, the green crawling over him higher and higher as he dives into the loose foliage of the park.

"A snitch?!" Oracle shouts, loud enough it crackles in her microphone. "You did not just call me a snitch. Of all the miserable insults I would have taken from your sorry, pathetic ass, being called a rat is hardly expected or deserved."

Red Hood scoffs as he pushes through underbrush and then grassy clearings, only to shove past more garden space and thicker brush to find the area around the reservoir pump deserted.

"Oracle, any sign of him?"

"Oh, I wouldn't want to fucking tattle on him, since we're being goddamned kindergartners," she hisses.

"Oracle."

"North."

"On it."

The silence over the line is maddening. Its only upside is that he can hear further through the dark than with he had her berating him. Still, it's too heavy.

"Tell me you wouldn't have told him. Like so many other times."

"I wouldn't have." Her pause felt the same as a fuse burning down. "Not unless I had to."

"Uh-huh. Had to. How many times have you had to cry to the bat before? Is it every day or just every other? Or, or, is it only when I'm in the picture, 'cause I don't know about you but that's how it's seemed so far." Maybe he isn't being fair. But he damn well doesn't care. Not right now, not when the only thing that matters is getting one step closer to that kid bleeding out in the back of the car. Bleeding out on the cold stone ground. That kid reaching for the door just begging —

"He's not on any cameras."

Her blithe update cuts the fury and fear off at its head, lets the shimmering snake slide back from around his neck for now.

Hood slows in his run, still heading North as instructed but ready to deviate. "So he's still in the park?" he asks.

"It's possible…" she trails off. "But, based on how slow he was going when the camera caught him, you should have found him by now if he was."

"And yet."

Her sigh is low and growly in the distortion, melted down into something less exhausted than he could tell it was. "And yet, he doesn't show on any cameras on the northern border street, or any other for that matter. I'm scrubbing the cameras around the area for anything remotely the right look, but no hits yet."

Hood swears heavily again, sliding to a stop on the half-frozen grass. It's already brown in some areas, killed by the frost. Other places are almost too green, clearly the work of Ivy. It gives him a headache and the violent emerald sheen suddenly makes him want to vomit.

"So, what," Red Hood breathes out, holding down either the urge to be sick or rage. Who knew? Not him. "He just disappeared? Vanished? Ceased to exist on this plane?"

"We've seen weirder."

"Oracle."

"Again, I said was scrubbing. He could have dodged them — on purpose or by accident, who knows."

Red Hood yanks the helmet off, desperate to breathe air that doesn't taste like the memory of smoke. Instead it was fresh and cold. Wind instantly bites at his face, making him realize for the first time that the barest amount of snow had started to fall. "We keep looking," he sighs, raking a hand over his domino before shifting it through his hair, careful to avoid the black grease in the center.

"We keep looking," is all Oracle replies.