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“I’m going to get so much shit for this.”
Alfred, still examining the AR-15 Jason had handed him a few blocks back, didn’t seem worried.
“This is filthy,” he complained, sliding the stock out, “Are all of your guns so poorly maintained?”
Jason sighed. “If you whine the whole time, they’re going to kick us off the team.”
“I’m not going to whine. I’m going to politely berate,” Alfred replied, glancing at him as he examined the firing pin, “At least they filed off the serial numbers. Not complete amateurs.”
Yeah, those were Jason’s guys. Not complete amateurs, in a nutshell.
“Let’s go over the plan again,” he said, instead of letting out the scream that was slowly building in his throat. “We enter through the back door while the others take the front. You shoot as many people as you want. I grab the safe and we get the hell out of there before the cops show up.”
“Simple,” Alfred remarked, dripping in polite derision under his domino mask, “Why do we even need the others?”
“Well, usually when you raid a building crawling full of mobsters, it’s a good idea to have more than one person for backup,” Jason said, immediately getting a look for the tone of voice he’d used, “And I need a distraction.”
“I can be quite the distraction,” Alfred murmured to his AR-15, sliding a possessive hand down its barrel. “Alas, my dear, we’ve been relegated to suppressive fire.”
“Some would argue that is a distraction,” Jason said. Alfred’s hand didn’t budge. “Stop stroking the gun. Jesus.”
“I’m not giving it back,” Alfred said, looking up at him, “I’m taking it home after this and cleaning all of this horrible grime out.”
“Fine,” Jason said easily, because what the hell was he supposed to say to that? “You sure you’re up for this?”
Alfred shot him an affronted look.
“I was kneecapping war criminals out East before you were even a glimmer in your parents’ eyes,” he said, then raised the AR-15 up onto his shoulder, “And, lest we forget, I’m doing you a favor, not the other way around.”
Yeah, Jason remembered that. Yes, Jason was eternally grateful. The group of people in his life he could call up on short notice to be a hired gun for an ethically-dubious warehouse raid was surprisingly small, considering his line of work.
“I’m grateful,” Jason said, because he was, “And in return, you get to shoot as many human traffickers and murderers as you want. Win win.”
There was a terrifying gleam in Alfred’s eyes. “Do I have to kill them?”
That was fucking ominous.
Heavy, Boost and Sinker filed into the alley a few minutes later, joining them in the shadows. They were all wearing black, so Jason’s instructions hadn’t been entirely ignored. They were all carrying similarly-rusty assault rifles from their stash.
Heavy took one look at Alfred -- still clearly an elderly man in a domino mask and a “casual” black button down carrying an AR-15 -- and turned to Jason.
“I thought you were calling in the big guns?” he asked in disbelief.
Jason tilted his head at Alfred. “He is the big guns.”
Boost spoke up. “He’s like, seventy.”
“You’re no spring chicken yourself,” Alfred said, domino mask rising up his face as his eyebrows made a valiant escape attempt, “Mr. Reese.”
Boost went still, staring at the butler in shock. He turned to Jason a moment later, face already reddening.
“You brought a fuckin’ narc--”
“It’s on your shirt, dumbass,” Jason cut in, before Boost could go for either of their throats, “Chill the fuck out.”
Boost looked down at his chest, spotting the nametag poking out from underneath his black sweater. With a growl, he ripped it off, thrusting it into his pocket.
“British motherfucker,” he muttered, glaring at Alfred. The butler grinned, a flash of white teeth in the darkness.
“Quite.”
“Let’s just get this over with,” Heavy said, holding out a meaty hand and settling his men, “This better be fuckin’ worth it, Hood.”
Worth it for Jason, definitely. For these rag-tag Gothamites? It was still up in the air.
“It will be,” Jason grunted, like the liar Bruce had taught him to be, “See you on the other side.”
He pulled Alfred away before the butler could attempt any further (viciously polite) chest thumping, dragging them back into the alley’s shadows.
Releasing Alfred upon unsuspecting mobsters resulted in unheard of levels of carnage.
Jason watched in disbelief as every man in the back room hit the floor with lethal precision, holding onto the remains of their knees, elbows, and, in one gruesome example, their hip.
Some were dead. Some definitely weren’t, by the guttural, agonized noises they were making.
Stepping around them, Jason pushed forward, pistols in hand.
Alfred cleared his corners with military efficiency, calling out a quiet clear to Jason as he approached the second room. They both turned as the sound of muffled gunfire reached them, followed by more screaming.
Late, Jason thought, quietly embarrassed on his team’s behalf. Fuck.
“That’ll be the others,” Alfred sighed, kicking an enterprising mobster who’d tried to grab his ankle, “This isn’t as fun as I remember it being.”
“Oh?” Jason asked, turning the corner and looking around the next set of rooms.
“These new rifles just rip through everything,” Alfred complained, “No aim or skill required. It would be hard to even miss, at this close range.”
Up front, there was more shooting and panicked screaming. Then some more shooting, now in panicked bursts, like someone had been backed into a corner.
Jason resisted the urge to facepalm.
“That, however, sounds an awful lot like missing,” Alfred observed, head tilting, “Where did you find these gentlemen again?”
Literally in a dumpster in the Narrows. But he wasn’t going to tell Alfred that.
“They were two for one at the deli,” he said, opening a random door. “No idea about Sinker. Oh fuck, finally.”
Alfred followed him into the tiny backroom, watching his back as he knelt in front of the safe.
“Fuck.”
“Not what you expected?” Alfred asked, sounding effortlessly amused. Jason had never seen a hired gun so at ease. Clearly, whatever spooky special ops training the butler kept denying was paying off. “Oh. That’s a bit large to throw in a sack, isn’t it?”
“I’m aware,” Jason gritted out, jabbing at the safe’s knob. Of course, it was locked. And he hadn’t brought his tools because intel had said the safe was tiny. Tiny! “Any bright ideas?”
Alfred looked around the room, then shrugged.
“Torture.”
Jason stopped playing with the knob, looking up in shock. “You’re joking.”
“Only a little, I’m afraid.”
An impressive thirty six seconds later, one of Alfred’s elbow-shot mobsters was thrown into a chair and staring at the muzzle of a Beretta lodged against his knee.
“You wanna walk again?” Jason asked, dropping his voice to a growl. The mobster stayed still, sweat painting his brow as his lips clamped shut. “Huh?”
Usually that worked. But not tonight, for some reason.
“Fuck off,” the mobster spat, “I’m not telling you shit.”
“You’re not--” Jason cut off, almost laughing, “Buddy. I’m gonna blow your fucking leg off like your buddy over there.” he said, jamming his thumb over his shoulder.
The mobster shook his head, staring at the gun against his knee with something almost like determination.
Well, I’m out of ideas.
Before he could try something else, Alfred sighed, waving him off. With zero hesitation, he grabbed Jason’s Beretta and pushed it into the man’s crotch, meeting the man’s suddenly-terrified gaze.
“You want a crater down there, mate?” Alfred asked, pushing the muzzle into the man’s balls. “Code to the safe. Now.”
The man looked up at the butler, clearly doing some harried calculations on the likelihood he was being bluffed, and quickly spit out a combination, nearly stumbling over the numbers.
“Thank you,” Alfred said, handing Jason his Beretta back. “Shall we?”
They exited into the alley with the safe’s contents in Jason’s bag, Alfred still covering his back as they waded through the downed mobsters from earlier.
A few blocks away, Alfred folded down the stock of his AR-15, tucking the gun back across his shoulder. In the shadows of the alley, the rifle was barely noticeable against the line of his shoulders.
“Do we have a rendezvous?” the butler asked pleasantly. Jason shook his head. “Really?”
“I’ll see Heavy at the bar in a few days,” he said, shrugging, “I’ll hand over their cuts then. Don’t think it’ll be much, though.”
There’d only been a few stacks in the safe, which was the most he’d promised the idiots, anyway.
“And you trust these men?” Alfred asked, then seemed to reconsider. “They trust you?”
“We have common interests,” Jason said, which wasn’t untrue, “I don’t mind seeing more of these fuckers dead, and they like cash.”
“Hm,” Alfred said, “But that’s not all.”
Jason froze, feeling like he was twelve and caught with his hand in the cookie jar again.
“You didn’t ask,” he said, thinking about the documents and ledgers he’d pulled from the safe under Alfred’s watchful gaze. The possibilities.
“I didn’t,” Alfred agreed, tilting his head. He was so Bruce-like sometimes, it was eerie. Jason knew exactly where he’d picked up the theatrics from, “And I won’t.”
Jason let out a breath, not realizing he’d been holding it. “...Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Alfred said, grinning. Another flash of teeth in the darkness, another Bruce-sim. “Actually, please do. When we’re in front of your guardian, and I can see the vein in his temple throb.”
Nice.
“Sure he won’t have an aneurysm when you walk through the door with that?” Jason asked, nodding toward the gun slung over Alfred’s back.
The butler’s grin widened.
“Oh, he’s seen me bring home worse,” Alfred said, “Can’t ever find the things, though, the poor dear.”
That Jason could believe. He shook his head, turning toward the mouth of the alley. It was almost dawn -- time for them to start heading back to their respective holes and burrow down.
“Any time you wanna do this again, let me know,” he said casually, watching Alfred’s shoulders twitch with silent laughter. “What? I’m serious!”
“We could bond over other things,” Alfred said, following him down the alley, “Say, a delicious family dinner this Thursday. A conversation over some tea. A Sunday walk, even.”
Ah, shit. Everything came with a cost, in the end.
“What if I like bonding over kneecapping people more?” Jason asked, obstinate, “What if that’s the way I express myself, huh?”
The butler’s lips twisted. He ran a fond hand along the strap of his AR-15, shaking his head slightly as they stepped onto the sidewalk.
“Frankly? I couldn’t blame you.”