The Red Hood Strikes Again! (OPEN)

[avia]

It was hot Avia whined to herself quietly. Even at night, it was so damn hot and humid and she couldn’t breathe. Uuuuugh! But she needed to steal something off the Police. They had confiscated from the Reavers a nifty grenade launcher and she wanted it. It was easier to steal from the Police than it was the United itself, so she opted to stake out the PD and wait for a good time to bust in there and get herself a new toy. It wasn’t really that she needed a grenade launcher per say… she just wanted one. It was all shiny and destructive and awesome. Couple that with the pistols she had stolen from several Reaver gang members too far from home the other week and the pretty sword she presently carried with her and she was building herself a lovely reputation. The sword was pretty short, only several inches long but too big to be called a dagger. It was well built and only sharp on one side. She had strapped it to her thigh for easy access. She also carried a pistol and two full clips with her, not that she often used her gun. The weapons she carried as precaution. The reputation she aimed for was one that needed no weapon.

She could steal from the United, and she had twice, and she could steal from the Reavers, which she had done four times. Each time, the victim had been outside their compound. This time, she was going right into Police headquarters and taking what she wanted. She wanted everyone to know she played no favorites. Everyone knew the United owned the Police. She was particularly knowledgeable in this fact. She had gone to the station so many times to visit her father that she knew exactly how to get in and out in the most direct path. She knew the guard stations and where all the goodies would be kept.

The Red Hood snuck in without setting off a single alarm. The people who saw her wound up unconscious and hidden. She had free range of the confiscated goods room within twenty minutes of entering the building. It only took so long to reach the room because she had to stop and wait for passersby to get out of her way. Sure, she could have just attacked the place and caused a huge ruckus, but she liked the idea of stealth better. Besides, her father was upstairs in his office. She didn’t want him to get hurt. The Red Hood took quick stock of the goods.

“Ooooooh, grenade launcher!” the Red Hood cackled, picking up the bulky device and giving it a look over. It was in fairly decent condition. It looked like it had been stolen by the Reavers from the United, and the Police took it from the Reavers. Well, now she was taking it from the Police from the Reavers from the United. “Who says all girls play with dolls- hello, there…” she diverted her attention from the grenade launcher to a shelf in the corner with a duffel bag on it. There were other things, like weaponry and stolen televisions and radios and such, but she liked the bag. The bag had a tag dated to just that day that it had been taken from some thugs. It was evidence in a drug case. She peeked inside and found it half full of money with some little bags of drugs on the side. This was perfect. She could care less about the drugs or the money, but the Police sure as well would. Cackling, Red Hood stuffed the remaining space in her new bag with the grenades that came with her new launcher and a couple bullet magazines for her caliber pistol. “It’s like Christmas!” she cheered. Red Hood tugged a can of spray paint from her jacket pocket and prepared her trade mark. She liked marking her victims in order to continue the necessary building of her reputation. In big, happy strokes she scrawled

LOVE, THE RED HOOD

across the wall and left the can of paint behind. There were several spots in NYC that were now marked liked that and not a few people as well. Oh yeah, she would be noticed. She was careful when she procured her paint. She always wore gloves and she tended to steal them from trashbins so that there was no purchase involved. If she couldn’t find spray paint, or ran out of her stores in her hideout under the condemned restaurant, she would just use something like lipstick or regular paint that happened to be red. The point was to make a mark, spray paint wasn’t the only medium to do that with.

Getting back out of the Police department was harder than getting in because now she had a heavy bag and a heavy gun, but she got out without incident. Although she had been discovered, she had not been caught. She heard several officers yelling and milling about when they discovered one of her unconscious victims in the break room. Okay, not the best place to hide a body but she was in a hurry.

Red Hood wasn’t spotted until she got outside. Then a few returning patrol officers saw her. She froze when they locked their gazes onto her, then casually waved with her free hand while aiming her loaded grenade launcher with the other. A few short seconds later, and the building next to the police station, used mostly to house criminals, experienced and explosion just outside the front door via a grenade. It caused the officers to duck and become distracted, and she took the opportunity to make a run for it. She took a left into the nearest, most convenient alleyway and scaled to the rooftops. She made a beeline for anywhere but the Police Station, but away from her hideout and her home. If anything, she was headed towards what used to be known as Central Park.

[q]

It all started with a radio. For the past couple of weeks, he had been working on improving an already existing model, but the only one he had managed to get his hands on didn't look particularly happy. Scratched plastic, broken antenna, no batteries... It wasn't a pretty sight. However, it was a choice between buying a nicer radio and eating dinner more than once this week. It had been a difficult choice. He liked food, but technology was like food for his soul. Of course, when he thought about it like that, it was impossible to stop him from debating with himself about whether or not souls could exist. It wasn't illogical, but there was no proof, and...

In the end, he decided it would be easier to get more literal food instead. The rather dubious radio could be fixed. It would be more difficult to fix any radio, even one in decent condition, if he was passed out from malnourishment. He could debate the existence of the soul another time. Until then, he could debate the existence of decent radio parts.

It took a bit of persuasion, but he managed to fix it up. It had a couple of sharp metal bits poking out, but Chris felt that the important thing wasn't if it could accidentally stab someone, but if it could work. And it did work. Considering that he had maybe not known what he was doing, he felt this was an achievement. Even if he did need to feed it electricity directly.

Still, nothing could get him down. He had managed to fix a dead radio, not kill it again, stay part of the new Teen Titans... It was a generally good day for him. He had even managed to pick up on some police signals. Sometimes, people might have called his creations pointless. Silly. Weird, even. He'd like to see them criticise a police-hacking radio.

"All units in the--" the radio said. The voice made Chris jump. Too caught up in his moment of smugness, he had forgotten that the radio was still on. It bounced on the pavement a couple of times before coming to a rest. He was pretty sure it wasn't broken. Unfortunately, the second he let it go, it had lost its power source. And he wanted to know where these extra units were being sent. It could be important. He could help. On purpose, this time.

Picking up the radio again, he tried to get the charge to just the right size again.

"-- duffel bag, approaching Central Park's--"

Chris needed no further invitation. He had been wandering the city on a sort-of patrol. Maybe this had something to do with getting the right spot for a police radio signal, since maybe the radio wasn't perfect yet, but he had always kept one eye out for miscreants. And here one was, announced on the radio. He was even near the old Central Park area. Already, his fingers had lost contact with the battery springs. He tucked the radio under his arm and began to run.

It was a couple of minutes when he stopped, breathing heavily from the exercise, that he realised he maybe should have listened to a little more of what the radio had to say. He didn't know who he was supposed to be looking for. Not what they were supposed to look like. Not even where they were going, apart from it being somewhere vaguely around where he was now. All he knew was it had something to do with a duffel bag. What he'd do was catch his breath, tune in to the radio and formulate a plan. A more logical plan. Or, in fact, any plan. He only had so much time, after all.

It was while he was still catching his breath that he spotted someone out of the corner of his eye. Someone red and white and running. He looked up, caught sight of a duffel bag, and his less logical side took over. Against his better judgement, he began to run again, to intercept this person before they realised who they were dealing with.

"Hey... stop!" he shouted. He even held up his hand for emphasis, dropping the radio. "Shit," he muttered, attempting to look like the loss of his latest creation hadn't phased him. Maybe he wasn't the most intimidating hero. He was still wearing jeans and a hoodie, his proper hero outfit stowed safely back at the Tower. He probably looked like a slightly unfit teenager, given that he was still breathing hard. But he was more determined now than ever to stop this villain in a red helmet. He wasn't a real hero yet, but even real heroes had to start somewhere.

[avia]

The Red Hood ran out of tall rooftops to run on, so she had to jump down from the several story buildings to the two story ones. The first time she had done this, she had been scared out of her mind. After a while she got better at it, but this was the first time she did it in full run. She leapt off a seven story building to a four story one. Luckily, she only hurt herself a little when she tumbled across the gravel that covered the roof. Rolling to her feet, she leapt off that roof to a second story and then down onto the street.

It was around this time that she heard a voice.
“Hey… stop!” the voice commanded. Although it was very uncertain of itself. Avia was so startled by it that she actually did skid to a stop in the middle of the road, her back to Central Park’s main entrance. She slid on the old pavement two feet, turning as she did so to face the voice and pulling her gun out as she did so. “Shit,” he muttered as some strange object in his hand dropped to the concrete. The Red Hood dropped her grenade launcher and the duffel bag where she stood, leaving her gun with the pile. She ran forward, charging the kid in the hoodie and jeans who was so stupid to try and stop her and leapt. Her legs came around him, straddling his torso, and her mass and velocity sent him reeling back onto the ground. She knelt over his prone form with her fist raised to strike him in the face. But she paused, because now she had a good look at him.

She knew that kid. The Red Hood hesitated, gloved fist held high, and the lowered it. She continued to pin him to the ground, however, with no regard whatsoever for how he felt about it. She went to school with him. Or she used to anyway. She hadn’t seen his face in the halls for some time now, although she had no idea how long it had been. He had been one of the first people she had met since leaving Gotham. Chris? she thought to herself curiously. Where have you been hiding yourself?

A gun went off and she flinched unnecessarily. The bullet bounced off the pavement to her right and skittered off harmlessly. “Whoops! The Po-Po!” The Red Hood cackled and jumped to her feet. She tugged Chris up with her and wrenched his arm behind his back, using him as a shield. She placed her short sword against his neck. “Ah ah ah…” she tsked the police officers, knowing she only had a small window before they would shoot him to get to her and nullify her escape. She forced him to back up with her to the pile she had left behind when she had confronted what she thought was just any old person. Using her toe, she tossed the grenade launcher into the air, caught it, and fired at the police. They scattered, but still a few of them were caught in the edges of the explosion. Nobody died, but she wouldn’t’ve cared if they had so long as none of them were her father. “Better run, kid,” she advised, letting him go in order to grab her pistol and her bag and took off running. She made certain to drag him behind her, though, because lord knows the airhead would stick around and the police would wind up dragging him in for questioning. If they did that, they could resort to torture methods. She didn’t want the poor sap to get hurt just for being an airhead. She fired another grenade behind them to deter any of the police still chasing her.

The Red Hood cackled. “You know my favorite part of this job? The toys…” she sighed whimsically to the boy behind her. She had pulled him into the woodland that the Central Park had become after several centuries of overgrowth. The police most likely wouldn’t follow.

[q]

Skidding on his backside wasn't quite how he had pictured this takedown. The red-and-white person, an apparently rather butch girl, had been more deterred by his words than his actual presence. He'd attempted to stop her full-on tackle, but he'd only bought himself about half a second. If I hadn't been so out of breath, I would have had a better chance he reassurred himself, not really believing it. He should have just zapped her when she tackled him. Not much of what was running through his head was particularly helpful, though. Mostly he was busy concentrating on protecting his face with his free arm. His first reaction was to prevent getting a broken nose.

The blow didn't come. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and looked up into the eyes of the red helmet. Well, she looked vaguely villainous. She was on the run from the police for taking something, which was bad. And yet, she wasn't hitting him? It completely defied logic. Surely after tackling him, she would knock him out and keep on going? But here they were, enjoying the pavement. He frowned, arm still half-protecting his face. If he hadn't been so disoriented by the logic leak, he might have taken advantage of the opportunity to reach out and stun her. The thought, however, didn't dawn on him. He was trying to work out the reasoning behind that inscrutable mask.

He was snapped out of his reverie by the gun shot. He made a sharp intake of breath and choked. “Whoops! The Po-Po!” she said. It was then that he realised he should have zapped her already, but already he was being pulled up, held up as a meat shield. Well, bugger he thought as she warned off the police. The sword was just touching his skin, not quite breaking it. Trying to regain a bit of ground, he concentrated on that spot. All he needed was enough voltage to make its way through to her hand. He willed the charge he had stored up the metal, but it wouldn't go more than a couple of inches down. Channelling electricity through anything other than his hands was difficult, but he had really been hoping it would work. Discharging completely was tempting but uncontrollable. He didn't want to risk it. Struggling to break her grip, he was forced back, the sword still at his throat.

Gotta stay calm, stay calm, stay calm... he thought over and over, still eyeing the edge of the sword. If he didn't stay calm, he wouldn't be able to take advantage of any windows of opportunity that popped up. Panic was illogical. Completely illogical.

The explosion convinced him that maybe a little panic was okay. Was that a grenade launcher? He didn't have time to think it through, already he was running after the red helmet girl. And suddenly, they were hiding out in the Central Park overgrowth.

“You know my favorite part of this job? The toys…”

"Oh, really..." he said, glancing back through the bushes. No police. Well, that was okay. If it came down to it, he could discharge and zap everything nearby without harming anyone but her. He didn't want to do more than knock her out, but it was good to know that he had the discharge option anyway.

"I mean, um, well, if you don't let me go and hand yourself over, I'll be forced to fight back." And finally, he felt the electricity run down his arms, through his wrist and onto her. It wasn't enough to stun her, but it should have been enough to get her to let go. And as soon as she did, he would run a little further into the ex-park and find something to fight back with. It was pretty obvious that, without a weapon, he was at a severe disadvantage. If he'd been a little more charged up, maybe he could have presented more of a challenge. But he would make do with the situation. He was determined to take her down.

"It's much easier to give yourself up willingly," he added, optimistically. There was no way she was actually going to, but it was worth trying to convince her anyway.

[avia]

"I mean, um, well, if you don't let me go and hand yourself over, I'll be forced to fight back." he said. The Red Hood scoffed and shifted to look over her shoulder at him. “Wha-“ she began to ask, but cut off with a sharp yelp of surprise. Something painful shot up her arm from her fingers, originating from Chris. "It's much easier to give yourself up willingly," he was saying, but his words had become obsolete. The shock had run into the hand that was grasping his, yes, but the surprise of it caused her other hand to tense. Unfortunately, that hand happened to have a finger round the trigger of a loaded grenade launcher. With a muffled ‘ka-thunk’, Red Hood saw what Chris had yet to: a grenade bouncing out onto the weeds with no pin in place.

The result of his actions, more or less, came about in a way that was favorable toward his original intent. They happened thusly: The Red Hood immediately shifted direction away from the live grenade, shoving Chris with her to get him out of range. She pushed him to a thick, fallen tree and knocked him onto the grass behind it into shelter. The grenade went off before she could get out of the way, and the explosion’s shockwave made her trip. She caught her foot on the broken edge of that same tree she had used to shield him and tumbled down a hill made up of old debris and natural growth that changed Central Park from the original design to one that was rather treacherous. Red Hood, at the base of the hill, slammed into an erect tree. She was left slumped up against it, her back leaning casually as if she had just sat down to rest against it, knocked temporarily unconscious. During the fall she had lost her grenade launcher, her duffel bag, and her pistol. The short sword was still safely sheathed at her thigh, but with being unconscious and all, it was at present useless to her.

The spot of land they had so hastily vacated was now on fire. Old brush and dead foliage had caught and were slowly spreading the warmth to their neighbors. Pretty soon, the kindling potluck party would make its way to the fallen tree, a delectable morsel to a growing fire, and spread across the park.

The Red Hood was only unconscious a moment, but the fog that had taken over her mind took longer to clear. Her vision was blurred from the impact and it became hard to see through the lens of her helmet. Her ears were ringing, or perhaps crackling, or was that really an actual sound and she wasn’t making any of that up? She had forgotten what she was doing there. All she could focus on was the pain in her back and her head. She had hit it pretty flat, so no part of her back took the full force of the impact, but it still hurt. Her fingers and toes were numb, stunned by the shock to her spinal cord. She groaned.

[q]

"Wha--!" he had just enough time to exclaim before, once again, he was shoved to the side. He had been almost ready for it a second time, had braced himself, had stepped backwards to absorb the force of the impact... And had tripped over a root. He just about managed to stay on his feet, but it hadn't been hard for the helmet girl to shove him back. He was already stumbling to his feet, but then the grenade went off. Landing on his backside again, he adjusted his glasses (miraculously, only halfway down his nose). The explosion had him disoriented enough, but what really confused him was what had happened before. He hadn't seen what had probably been a grenade, and, had he been left to his own devices, he would have probably ended up a little more well-cooked than he would have liked. But the girl in the red helmet - his supposed enemy, villain of the day, thief, hostage-taker - had saved him? He didn't understand, but he didn't have time to hypothesise. Already, he could smell the smoke, the leaves were dry enough, that tree dead enough to make the bad situation worse; and there was no way he was going to wait for her to pounce again. Using the tree for support, he scrambled to his feet again. Arms held up to guard, he glanced around, looking for that tell-tale red preceding another attack.

When he spotted the red, he jumped back reflexively. It quickly became obvious that was unnecessary. She had saved him from the initial explosion, but hadn't been quite so lucky herself. It was hard to tell if she was conscious or leading him into a false sense of security. The helmet obscured any hints.

"Hey! Are you alive in there?" he called out. The lack of response was unsurprising. Perhaps he should have waited for a bit longer, but already he was reaching out to her, trying to grab her by the armpits. Maybe some people would have left her there. Chris wasn't one of those people. He wasn't a hero part-time. If someone - anyone - needed his help, he wasn't going to ignore them. Even if they might have been faking.

Plus, she had saved him. That had to count for something.

So Chris dragged her away from the explosion site as best he could. "Come on..." he muttered, unclear of whether he was urging himself on, or trying to get her to wake up.

As soon as they were a little deeper into the forested park, he paused to regroup his thoughts. He could have climbed up a tree using static, but if the fire spread to where they were, they'd be stuck. On his own, he might have managed to avoid the worst of the fire. He could have left alone the way they had come in. But dragging her, they'd both be toast. And that wasn't even considering the policemen that might be waiting outside. They might have been distracted by the encroaching flames, but it wouldn't blind them to their two buddies from earlier emerging. But it would be okay, he told himself. The park fence was there, probably put there as a misguided attempt to stop hooligans meeting up in the belly of the park. It was bent and weatherbeaten, but it was close and could support their weight. It didn't look too rusty. And if not, it wasn't so far to fall. He bent down and slung one of her arms over his shoulder. Muscles groaning in protest, he stood up and felt something against his leg. It was her short sword, the one she had held against his throat. He could still feel where the metal had touched. Saving her was one thing, but he wasn't going to save that, too. Grabbing the hilt, he threw it back in the direction of the fire. Satisfied, he dragged the both of them over to the fence. He reached out and touched it cautiously, felt the connection as the electrons danced between his fingertips and the metal. Grasping the pole more firmly, he tried pulling them up, but dropped back down as soon as the metal started to groan. With a push, it fell back onto the pavement. Ramming the adjacent pole with his shoulder, it followed its partner. All Chris and the helmet girl had to do was clear the knee-high wall and they'd be home free. Well, more or less.

[avia]

When Red Hood finally came around, she was hearing something fall over with a clatter. She blinked several times until she came into focus and stared at the metal fence resting on the ground. She had been nowhere near the fence yet when the grenade went off. And why was she standing? She glanced over and saw Chris supporting her weight and suddenly understood what was going on. “A-… are you saving me?” she asked incredulously, unwinding her arm from around his shoulders and demonstrating that, though wobbly, she could stand on her own two feet again. She patted herself down and looked back at the fire to take stock of what had gone on between the grenade being launched and where she was at that second. “Whoa. Whoa! Hey! Where’s my sword? And where’s my gun?!” as she spoke her voice got higher pitched and irritable, but that all changed when she scanned the fire. Then, she gasped in horror as she spotted the fire licking at the fabric of her duffel bag. “Run. Run, there were bullets in that- run!” she commanded, as she took the lead and leapt over the short wall. Sure enough, luck would have it that they had cleared the line of fire when angry pops and fizzles signaled that all of her new ammunitions were going up in the flames. All of her hard work was being sucked up into oblivion all because of a stray grenade. Live and learn.

“Aaaw, man!” she whined, glancing over her shoulder at the destruction left in their wake. She turned and punched Chris in the arm. “What the hell was that with the shocking me thing? Rude! It’s your fault that grenade went off and now look! All my weapons are gone.” she ranted, tossing her hand back towards the blaze. “I was gonna paint that grenade launcher red, too…” she sighed in dismay. Red Hood stuffed her hands in her pockets. It wasn’t a total loss, she supposed. She wasn’t dead. Yay! The Reavers didn’t have the grenade launcher or the money and neither did the United or the Police. She would’ve liked to have kept those things, but she couldn’t stop what had already happened.

One of the remaining grenades overheated and went off, worsening the blaze. “Way to go,” Red Hood remarked to Chris. She went on to dust herself off and preen. White was a stupid color to pick for her costume. Every speck of dirt showed up. And what the hell was that? Blood? Where did that come from? She wondered, checking herself now for injuries. She was bleeding a little from her fall and such, but nothing major and nothing that would have gotten on her hip. She glanced up at Chris, and even though he couldn’t see it, her eyes did get wider. She fixed her voice to remain as calm as possible, lest she give away that she was actually concerned and she said as conversationally as possible, “So… you’re bleeding…”

[q]

“A-… are you saving me?”

Well, surely that was pretty obvious? He didn't point it out, though. He was too busy appreciating that he was no longer carrying the dead weight of another person. Stretching out his back felt great, even if his shoulder was still sore and the fire wasn't exactly all that far away.

“Whoa. Whoa! Hey! Where’s my sword? And where’s my gun?!”

"Hey, towing you down here was enough for me. Not that--"

He was going to add something about how giving her weapons to beat him up wasn't on his list of priorities, what with the fire and the police and whatever else, but he was cut off. He didn't hear exactly what she said, but the general message sunk in. Imminent explosion, running good, hanging around less so. He could hear the noises, remembered all those grenades that were probably left over. He had caused enough small explosions in his time to know when one was coming. He leapt after her over the wall and brought up an arm to shield his face, watching the flames curl upwards through the gaps. Well, that was close.

“Aaaw, man!” Disappointed, but still alive. And then she punched him!

"Ow!" After saving her life, it wasn't exactly the reaction he had hoped for. Her weapons rant didn't exactly help.

"Just an observation, but it's not all that difficult to make a grenade launcher. It's almost as easy as buying the paint to make it all nice and shiny and red." Being irritable made him somewhat patronising, but he wasn't lying. Something to hook the pin, or even begin the chemical reaction, a delaying reaction to stop it blowing up in the wielder's face, then some kind of sufficient trajectory spring or repulsion to launch the thing. A magnet could work, even, some kind of electromagnet...

Wait. Now was not the time to be thinking about grenade launcher design. “Way to go,” the helmet girl said. Definitely not the time.

"It could have been way worse," he replied mildly, watching the follow-up explosions with vague curiosity. "Putting out fires is okay. Resurrecting the dead is a little bit more difficult. Or completely impossible, even."

Actually, the concept of life and death and the processes between were fascinating. He didn't really think it was impossible. Heck, he could manipulate electricity with his mind, was acqainted with a shapeshifter and a guy who could use magic, the mere idea of which was passing strange. Plenty of impossible things happened all the time. They weren't really impossible, of course. People just hadn't found a satisfactory explanation, yet.

"Maybe only a little impossible," he reconciled.

“So… you’re bleeding…” Was he? Really, he was too distracted by the idea of possible/impossible, resurrecting the dead, grenade launchers... Absentmindedly, he felt his face, his neck, his arm... Ah, there it was. A rip through the hoodie, through the shirt, and something slick and red running down his arm underneath. He must have caught something when he had tried to block head injury. Maybe he even sliced it against something sharp someone had left on the earth of Central Park. He had been too distracted by the moment to feel it. Later, it would sting like crazy. Now, he could only feel a dull throb as his arm tried to stitch itself back together again.

"So I am," he said, still only vaguely interested in the whole thing. He really ought to bandage that soon. He didn't want to get an infection. But he was forgetting something. Something important...

"Wait a minute. Weren't we supposed to be fighting? I was going to get that duffel bag back..." He remembered she had dropped it. There hadn't exactly been a good time to pick it up, and now the fire had eaten it up.

"Maybe not," he added, looking at the fire. "And why do you care if I'm bleeding anyway? We're enemies. More or less." Given that they had both saved each other's life once, they couldn't really be complete enemies. Something between, then.

[avia]

"It could have been way worse. Putting out fires is okay. Resurrecting the dead is a little bit more difficult. Or completely impossible, even."

She watched him think about the just how impossible resurrection was or was not and rolled her eyes, crossing her arms firmly across her chest to communicate she was not amused. "Maybe only a little impossible," he reconciled. To that, she rolled her eyes.

Red Hood stood back and watched as he examined himself for injuries, quietly relieved that it was nothing too serious. "Wait a minute. Weren't we supposed to be fighting? I was going to get that duffel bag back...” She propped her eyebrows up, arms still firmly crossed, and waited for it to dawn on him that he had sabotaged his own plan when he left her weapons behind in the fire. She was most certainly not amused. "Maybe not. And why do you care if I'm bleeding anyway? We're enemies. More or less." Red Hood rolled her eyes again and sauntered the distance between them. She reached up and flicked him right in the middle of his forehead. “What fantasy world do you live in?” she demanded cooly. Since when was the world so black and white and red all over? He had a warped sense of reality if he didn’t get it yet. Just because she was stealing from the police didn’t mean she was heartless. Well, she did kind of put a blade to his throat, but that was necessary. He just needed to stop holding silly grudges. It’s not like she hurt him or anything. And she got him out of the line of fire. The only reason they were injured was because he made her fire a grenade on accident with his stupid voodoo powers. She’d forgotten about those. He would go join some boyband of good intentions.

“You’re really dense, you know that? Augh, don’t you know anything?” she ranted, tossing her hands up into the air. She heard voices from the left and paused, looking towards the sound. People were crowding around now to watch the fire. “Come on…” she groaned in exacerbation and took his hand, less yanky this time, and pulled him into the shadows where they could escape public scrutiny. “The Police ganked that launcher off the Reavers, right? Well, the Reavers got it from United and UNITED OWNS THE POLICE.” she was waving her arms around in agitation as she spoke, leading him through the alleys now to somewhere safe. “The United and the Reavers need to be taken down. That’s what I’m doing. What’re you doing? Playing make believe hero time?” she scoffed.

She finally came to a stop at a crossway in the alleys near what was once called Times Square. Red Hood pulled from the inside of her coat a scrap of cloth she kept on her for when she was injured and turned to Chris. “Hold still,” she ordered and proceeded to check the wound for dirt and debris and then tie her gauze over it. “You should be more careful. A clutz like you will get yourself killed playing vigilante like that. Did you even have a plan or were you winging it? Because, you really kinda suck at improvisation.” the tone of her voice had gone from the harsh, demeaning one she had been using previously to harp on him about losing her weapons to a softer, kinder one. Now she sounded like, even though she was insulting him, she was doing it nicely. She wasn’t trying to be mean, just speak the truth. There was a genuine hint of concern in her voice that she didn’t pick up on because she was too busy seeing to his injury. “There. Are you hurt anywhere else?” she asked once she had finished tying his bandage off.

[q]

The flick was unexpected. He was half-expecting something more violent. “What fantasy world do you live in?” she asked as he rubbed his forehead.

"This one," he retorted. Maybe it was rhetorical, but he didn't like being told things like that. Bias was illogical. Warping the world with opinion was illogical. Accusing an enemy of being an enemy seemed perfectly logical to him. Maybe the world wasn't black and white. Maybe it was all shades of grey. But for Chris, it was very difficult to shake off that mindset. It was much easier for him to file people away into specific mental folders and leave them there. They might deviate from expected behaviour, but it was all within the error margins. Maybe it was illogical logic, but he couldn't see it.

Still, he wasn't fighting her. He could have reached out and stunned her right now, called someone up to take her away. It would be easy. She wasn't on her guard, he had his hands free, could feel the charge accumulating in his palms. But he wouldn't. They seemed to have called an unspoken ceasefire. He would at least hear what she had to say first.

“You’re really dense, you know that? Augh, don’t you know anything?” Two stupid turns of phrase that didn't look like they was going to die any time soon. The English language seemed to have warped the meaning of 'dense'. And obviously it was impossible to know nothing. Every living thing knew something. He knew that she was telling him he was stupid, not a blank slate. The way she was doing it irritated him. He was going to explain to her exactly why, but before he had time, he heard the voices. She had heard them too, clearly. He didn't try to fight against her this time when she dragged him to a more secluded spot.

And as they walked, she ranted. He didn't interrupt, but waited for her to run out of steam. "So? What if I am playing hero? I don't see anything wrong with that. If we do things your way, it'll grow into another super gang that rules the city, and we'll end up right back where we started. Blowing people up? That's just the beginning. You can't fight fire with fire to get this whole ugly mess to end." As he spoke, he kept talking faster and faster, as if he were desperate to explain this to her as soon as possible.

"Or there'll be anarchy," he added. "If the super gang isn't your thing. Do you really think that'll make things better?"

Even as he spoke, he realised it wasn't the most compelling argument. It had holes, it relied too much on vague probability, it was illogical. Based on emotions, emotional speculation. He didn't like it. What he wanted to do was let her feel what he felt. He couldn't sit down and listen to another person getting mugged, another person getting killed, when he could get up and do something about it. But he couldn't stop crime with the same methods. He'd just be another criminal, then. If he could represent something greater than himself, maybe people would realise there were other ways to keep moving on. It wasn't arrogance that made him think so, it was the mentality of those heroes in the past, those people who seemed to be doing so well. He suddenly wished he could know what had gone wrong. How had things gotten this bad?

...You really kinda suck at improvisation,” she was saying. Now wasn't the time to be thinking about historical events. He had to focus on the moment. Touching the gauze cautiously, he looked back at the emotionless red helmet. A strange person, maybe. But at least she appreciated the ceasefire. “There. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

"Thanks. Er... I think I'm okay." He paused. "I do suck at improvisation. I can't do a lot of things. Or I can't do them right." It was annoying, but he wasn't upset about it. It was just stating a fact, like that the sky was sometimes blue, or it might rain this year. Even if things did work themselves out, he couldn't change the facts. "I could kill you, you know. I could have killed you then, too. It takes a lot less electricity than you'd expect to kill a human being. You wouldn't be able to kill anyone if I got you first. But you know what? I don't want to. What's that thing people say...?" He seemed to be asking himself this. He couldn't quite remember the phrase.

"Oh. Yes. It's not you, it's me. That's it. So. That's the way things are. Maybe it's make-believe now, but I'm going to make a difference one day. Without killing anyone," he added. "Why don't you give it a try?"

[avia]

Red Hood let him rant right back at her as she fixed up his arm. After all, he had points that she hadn’t thought of. It had never occurred to her to not avoid the deaths of others. Her father, of course, she would never bring harm to. But he was the first opponent she had felt remorse toward when the thought of hurting him came to mind. Yet while he had a point, he failed to see the flaw. If these people were not killed, what was going to keep them from coming back? He could lock them away, but they would only escape. But if she put them in the ground… they would descend into dust, never to escape their jail.

"Why don't you give it a try?"

Red Hood sighed and turned her back to him, meandering several steps away. She could hear him behind her. They used to be friends, sort of. As close to friends as she got, anyway. Of everyone, he was the only one who was truly nice to her. “It’s not that simple,” she said gently. Red Hood reached up and unlatched her helmet on the right side, loosening it so she could pull it up over her head.

Her long blonde hair cascaded out in a braid behind her, thumping her on the back heavily. Avia turned to face Chris now, cautiously showing him her true face. She blinked at him in new light, because the helmet masked a lot of the color around them. “The United owns the Police. They own my father. If I don’t destroy the United, they could kill him one day.” she explained quietly. “Chris, don’t you see? I’m doing this to protect him.”

[q]

No way. It was, but it couldn't be. It contradicted, it made no sense, it must be his eyes playing tricks on him. Maybe his powers were advancing in a new direction, maybe he couldn't see what was really there.

No, he told himself. His explanations were what made no sense. His vision was as it had always been, more or less. Things were the same colours they had been five minutes ago. And she had called him by name. He hadn't said it throughout the entire exchange.

So it was her, it was Avia. She had been his sometimes-friend back when he attended high school. And now she was a sometimes-villain? Or something like a villain, at least.

"Oh. I didn't-- I don't, can't, um." He stopped talking, took a deep breath, and tried again. "I see. Well. It's been a while. Um. Hi. I guess." The whole situation was giving him a headache. His words were tripping over each other as he tried to speak, and he couldn't seem to say anything important. Or coherent.

"So you're doing this for your father," he repeated slowly, for his own benefit. "I see. But. Who's protecting you? Who's going to protect you when the United or the Reavers or whoever else start thinking that you're too annoying and it's time to say goodbye? Or what if you're not doing enough and everything you do turns out not to make any difference? Not that I've changed my mind about your methods or anything," he added quickly. On some level, he realised that he was voicing his concerns for himself as much as her. What if he was wasting his time? Maybe he wasn't cut out to be a hero, try as he might. But, no, he hadn't tried everything yet. He wouldn't give up. He didn't think that he would be able to.

"And setting all that to one side for a bit, how do I know I can trust you in the first place?" That was the part of his brain that remembered her holding a sword to his throat and trying to blow up policemen talking.

[avia]

She raised an eyebrow as he stumbled through his confusion over her reveal. She had to admit, she probably broke a few circuits in his brain when she showed him her face. Avia tucked her helmet under her arm and listened to everything he said with downcast eyes. Every doubt she had fought so hard to tamp down came flooding to the surface again as he voiced them. How many nightmares had she had? How many times had she seen in father ordered to kill the Red Hood and succeeding, only to realize that he had killed her, his own child, his precious daughter? What amount of hours of planning and scheming could make up for the fact that, in the end, if the United wanted her dead then it would be so? What happened when the hammer came down upon her father and she wouldn’t be there to protect him?

She already knew the answer to that one. If her father died, then she would walk into United and take out everyone she could before they got her. It was not the solution her father would want her to take, but she knew that to lose him would cause that sort of rage. …What if he ever found out what she was doing at night….

"And setting all that to one side for a bit, how do I know I can trust you in the first place?"

…Hm, he had a point there. “Because I trust you, stupid,” she sighed in a long-suffering type of way similar to what she used to do in high school. Avia stood directly across from him, right within his reach. He could do anything to her, she was so close, and she wouldn’t have time to get out of the way. He looked older than he did when they were in school. He looked serious. Not in the ‘science is so cool I’m so smart’ way he once did, but in a grown up, serious, world-on-my-shoulders way. “If the United or the Reavers come after the Red Hood, I’ll figure something out. I can take care of myself. I always have.” Sure, she had ‘friends’ in school, but she was a shallow with them as they were with her. She was so used to being kidnapped or blackmailed or avoided for being the commissioner’s daughter that taking on her problems alone was nothing to bat an eyelash at. “It’s you I’m worried about. Sure, you’ve got your nifty voodoo powers,” she called them that just to irritate him, “but you’re such a clutz and you’re a ditz on top of that. Chris, please tell me you don’t make a habit out of chasing down strange people in weird masks.” she pleaded, genuinely concerned. She may be making a huge target out of herself, but he was a walking skeet puck waiting to get shot down.

[q]

Did he have a habit of chasing down costumed weirdos? "Not really," he said, and paused. Come to think of it, he did seem to chase down a lot of people in masks. Or people who were clearly suspicious. Or people who were actively committing a crime nearby. "Well, I wouldn't call it a habit, exactly. Maybe a correlation." He didn't get a kick out of it, he didn't feel a compulsion to do it, it was a means to an end. Consistently.

"I wouldn't worry about me, though. I'm getting better with my, er, voodoo powers. And I have people to help me. A whole team of us." It brought a smile to his face. He was there, at the beginning of something big. He had bits of proof, but there was no rational reason for him thinking so. It was a feeling, one of those vague, unquantifiable creatures. It contradicted his desperate need for logic. But it didn't grate as badly with his mind as the other things that couldn't be backed up with real, solid proof. It felt true, and with something like this, surely that was the first step to making it true? If they didn't believe it, if they didn't have confidence that it could become real, it never would.

"Do you really think they're voodoo?" he asked. The word had stuck this time. It was an interesting idea... If he couldn't find another explanation, maybe it was one worth investigating. "Maybe if they're not some kind of mutation... Wait. That isn't what I meant to say." And so it wasn't. Why was he so easily distracted? He ought to carry around a notebook. He could write down all the things to investigate later.

"If you need help... You could always come to us. You could even join us, you know?" Why did it sound like a cult when he said it out loud? Somehow, the meaning seemed to get bogged down between his brain and his mouth. Still, undeterred, he continued. "We can help you. And even if you don't want to get help from all the Titans, I could help you. Two of us are at least twice as likely to succeed. And, well..." He frowned, trying to think of a better way to word what he had to say. But sensitivity wasn't his strong suit. "I don't want you to die. So. Don't get yourself killed or anything."

[avia]

“Not really,” he had said. Avia groaned as she listened to him explain that it wasn’t a habit but a happy coincidence. He was going to die. “You’re going to be squished,” she sighed, running her hand over her face tiredly. It was late and she had not slept since that morning. The lack of sleep was beginning to wear on her physically. She fell asleep in class sometimes, now, and her teachers didn’t appreciate it. They were all too scared of her, however, and her father’s influence, to do anything about it. They complained to him about it occasionally, but not with earnest. Her father took it that she daydreamed in class, not full-on slept, thanks to their hesitation. He just told her to pay attention.

The smile on Chris’ face when he let slip there were a whole team of idiots like him out there made Avia want to groan again. With any luck, those other members of his boyband were better at defending themselves than he was. She had kicked his ass and she hadn’t even been trying. He was so giddy about this fact that he didn’t even care that she had mocked his powers. He hadn’t even noticed. In fact, he was calling them voodoo now too. Oh for the love of Pete… she sighed inwardly to herself. Dead man walking. Especially if he kept on that vein where he tried to interpret whether his power came from voodoo or mutation. She gave him the driest, drollest stare she could muster, just to drive home the fact that she was not interested in what he thought the basis of his freak powers were. For all she cared, he’d been turned upside down and rubbed on the carpet for hours by his parents when he was a baby, and the resulting static never left his system. Of course, they did this purely to stick their son to the wall like a balloon and leave him there. Instant babysitter. The thought of baby Chris plastered to a wall with his hair sticking up in all directions made him smirk.

Unfortunately, this came illy timed. He was talking now about joining his boyband. They could help her, he said. Or, if that was too much, he could help her. Right in to her grave, she thought wryly. He was inexperienced with fighting outside of what bullies did to him. So he could probably take a good hit, but what she needed was someone who could give them out. Someone with a little less morality. Avia understood his reasoning, but she held firm to her own. She had to take out United and the Reavers. The only way to do that was to kill them. Certainly there were those, like her father, who had gotten in too deep while looking for a better life for their families… she would try to avoid them. They all had the same look as her father. The same caring eyes. Those she tended to try to not hurt but if she betrayed weakness in front of the wrong people, she would be killed. All of her actions would be for nothing if she got herself killed. Her father would just be killed the second they pulled off her helmet.