Devils Went Down to Gotham

by Anonymous

Summary:

There was something loose in Gotham City.

Or at least that's the vibe Nero got from Dante who was being his usual snarky, cryptic self about it.

Though if Nero ends up having his entire life upended by the guy again, he swears he's moving to Gotham to join the Bats. He's taking that damn sword with him, too.

Or: pre-Luke Skywalker-ed Nero is set loose on Gotham, Yamato and all. Reports of a Robin with a bleached hair job have skyrocketed, Red Hood hasn't been seen in a month, Crime Alley's is slowly eating itself alive, and there's reports of earthquakes, weird plant life, and glowing blue monsters oozing green slime out and about. What's all that about...

Notes:

• For bubblemylktea.

:)

Chapter 1: the devil you know

If Nero knew Dante had wanted an errand boy on his demon hunting trip in Gotham, he would have flipped the asshole off and told him to get lost and find one up his—

Okay. So things weren’t going like he thought. Still, any period of time away of Fortuna wasn’t a complete loss, he'd admit.

The first few weeks he’d tried to stay in the city had felt like being dissected by judging eyes every day. Despite the truth about Sanctus and the Order and all those things, a stunning amount of the population had remain steadfast in their loyalty. Which meant that even if they didn’t hate Nero before, they certainly did now having aided the guy who killed their last leader, revealed to have demonic heritage, and basically turned his back on the Order.

So even if the destinations Dante had let him tag along to after everything did smell like smog, piss, and utter misery— he’d be there. Though the longer he was away, the more he missed Kyrie.

Nero groaned. ‘Backup’ his ass. If that jerk had wanted backup, he wouldn'tve run off the second Nero turned his back. 

So of course, the second they’d reached their shitty motel and Nero had hopped of the back of Dante’s dingy bike, he’d tossed Nero a crumpled twenty and told him to ‘get grub’ and ‘meet back here with pizza’ before vanishing into the night before Nero could protest. 

He was tempted to take it all in swing and go off into the night to find what Dante had said to be some gathering of low level demons himself, but it seemed like Dante had taken those address details with him as well. Really, the guy could invest in a flip phone or something. What sorta big shot demon hunting business had a single office landline back in Red Grave? He wondered if he could convince Dante to take one out of the human Dark Knight’s handbook and supe up a car to take around or something.

On their budget though, Nero had low expectations Dante would roll up on an asphalt eating Hellcat and would probably come sputtering along in some soccer mom van that would start disassembling itself before it left school zone level speeds. 

Anything would be better than that beat up bike Dante hauled him on to cross city lines, though. His ass still hurt from the back road shortcut Dante had taken turned seven hours of U-turns and rainstorms, because of course, Dante was never lost, just ‘on a scenic route’ and even the weather just outside of Gotham was affected by her shitty personality. It didn’t help that Dante didn’t exactly believe in traffic laws either. 

But even if Dante did have a phone, its not like he could be relied on to pick up a call anyway, Nero sulked. 

God, what if he happened to find a swarm nearby? They didn’t exactly have the funds for freakin’ sky signal like some people. Smoke signals would get lost in all the stupid smog. So what, hope and pray the guy could smell his demise from however far away he was? 

“I should’ve smelled bullshit when he asked me for help at least…”

“Uh, what?” 

Nero blinked and looked up at the associate at the counter in the middle of ringing up Dante’s order. The worker’s dead, tired eyes barely twitched as they paused mid scan. Unsettled, Nero tried for a reassuring smile that he knew probably looked more like constipation.

They stood in silence for a long moment, only the tinny voice of a radio from the store speakers talking about conspiracies over recent Gotham earthquakes and reminders of the early city curfew for Crime Alley could be heard.

Giving up, he made a gesture to the food warmer on the counter, containing a few sad pieces of spinning skewers with dubious looking meat and god knows how old pizza. “I’ll also take the rest of that.”

Nero swore the worker looked mildly horrified and Nero reevaluated his previous plan to freeload off of whatever he was getting Dante.

“Uh, actually I think I forgot something. Could you hold that real quick?”

The cashier gave Nero the most foul, withering look known to man before they plastered a pure plastic smile on their face. “Sure, man. Not like we close in ten or anything, I’ll just be waiting here.”

Nero winced, feeling like a major asshole as he hurried himself back down one of the aisles he’d seen less dubious looking instant ramen. He cursed Dante leaving him in the middle of nowhere after hauling his ass across city lines just to fuck off and ask Nero— who was starving by the way— to play pizza delivery boy. “I’m gonna shove that pepperoni up his sorry—”

Before he could jog back to the counter where he’d left the rest of his stuff, the electronic tune of the motion sensor went off towards the front of the store.

A pair of girls covered in bruises and caked with Gotham grime came stumbling through glass sliding doors. They barely waitied for the automatic door to slide open all the way, a hands catching on the panes before pushing themselves over the threshold.

“Help! Help, there’s a van, they’re trying to—”

It wasn’t long before the sliding door was forcibly pushed aside and the familiar sound of a gun’s safety catch being clicked off echoed through the small store. Nero could barely make out the top of a few heads crowding where the cashier had been. “Okay, shitheads, listen up! You all know how this goes.” 

Dropping his haul of items onto the nearest rack, Nero moved from behind the end of the aisle to look down a row and get closer to make out a group of people in a random myriad of Halloween masks. They slung baggy burlap sacks with loose thread and scuff marks over the tops of their heads like a hood. Looking closer, Nero made out tiny, pointed horns and red, blue color schemes follow by sharp teeth and few goatees.

Nero tried not to smile when he realized what they were.

Devils in Gotham… who would’ve thought?

“Seriously, man?” The dead eyed cashier intoned to the the masked man holding the barrel of a pistol rather close to their face as they raised their hands lazily. The pair of girls were crowded at the checkout and Nero mentally counted the number of assholes at the counter and the bullets he was already thumbing in his coat pocket.

Nero’s first mistake was assuming even running errands for Dante would be tame. Of course, this sliver of time would be the day Nero decided to leave the Red Queen with Lady.

He didn’t trust many people beyond Kyrie with his sword, but after Dante had promised she’d had a way with weapon modifications, Nero thought a single night would be alright.

He’d seen the Kalina Ann. That thing was a gorgeous monstrosity and he wasn’t above saying he was jealous.

Besides, the last case he and Dante had been on put the Queen through the ringer and Nero would rather not have her for a day than explode into pieces when he exceeded her fuel line a little too much.

Look, he knew this was Gotham of all places and while it didn't have a vacation destination rep, Nero wasn't just gonna pull up to a corner shop at fuckass o’ clock with a engine powered demon slaying sword under his arm like a handbag.

Besides, he could take a minor robbery without her. Before he’d been taken in by Kyrie’s family, before he’d been inducted into the Order, he hadn’t needed a sword or a gun when assholes thought a lone orphan was an easy target.

The clang of rattling bells signaled the front door sliding open again and in pour four more guys in with masks, malice dense enough in their gait the whole shop seemed to curl in on itself. 

Still. Entirely plausible. It’s not like he didn’t have the Blue Rose heavy in his inner coat pocket. He didn’t want to go overboard on what seemed like a few human kidnappers. 

Clicking open the barrel as quietly as he could, he was suddenly overcome by an acute sense of dread. The air seemed to condense and something in his gut told him there was some wrongness coming for him. It was familiar, that chill down the spine, that turning sickness in your gut.

Malevolence made physical. 

Through the sliding door, skittered the hunched figures of something Nero’s Devil Bringer twitched to be closer to, like calling to like. A subtle blue-green glow emitted from cracks in it’s skin, bathing the store in an eerie glow that overpowered the neon signs in the window. Nero was vaguely reminded of Dante’s more demonic form only these demons appeared more like deformed, runt like versions of him. Wings to small to support bony bodies, winding limbs instead of heavy corded muscle, even their horns grew in jagged spikes instead of neat, thick spirals.

The small blessing was that Nero only counted two. Vein marks extended from each of its chest where a sickly sort of green began to ooze from within. With one intent on sniffing everything it came across, from the remains of his purchase on the counter to the candy bar section, the other seemed intent on the lone escapees, still shaking and heaving with breath.

…All right, so blasting away with all these civilians around wasn't really feasible anymore. Sue a guy for getting optimistic for a second. 

“Hey.” The head mask pushed the barrel of his gun to the cashier’s head. A gloved hand pushed Dante’s wrapped up pizza off the counter with a lazily lean over the counter. “This mess. You ringing up anybody else in the store?”

At that, it was almost as if the demon could smell him and Nero barely stumbled back behind shelving before the figure craned its neck at an inhuman angle towards where he’d stuck his head out. Nero froze, his left arm clamping over the anxious buzzing energy his Devil Bringer always seemed to have, especially since he’d taken up Yamato. The blade in question pulsed in tandem, responding to the energy like a buzzing magnet.

Before the guys up front could get suspicious, one of them cut in sounding exhausted. “You know, Larry, we wouldn’t even be in this mess if you tied them up when I told you.”

Larry, Nero assumed, turned away from looking down the aisle Nero had been peeking down. “Well, Dave, you weren’t supposed to bring the boss’ weird fuckin’ experiments for the kidnapping job now were ya’?”

“They make meeting the quota quicker, I didn’t know you was gonna freak out instead, jackass!” Nero silently thanked Dave the Kidnapper and took the moment to slip down a row that wasn’t in a direct line of vision to where he was.

“Oh yeah, lemme just stay put and let the creature of unimaginable horror have me! It’s alright though, I got a buncha randos tied up for big boss! Hope he sends my wage to my funeral after I’ve been eaten by freakin’ Predator over here—”

Nero got to the end row of the store, creeping behind the last row of shelving. Seeing a neon exit sign behind a wall of stacked crates, he wondered how long it would take the demons to make their way across the linoleum before he got the civilians out.

“Okay! Jesus, shut up already.” Nero’s attention snapped back to the front where Dave turned to the cashier, readjusting the aim of his pistol and gesturing wildly. “We’ll just take this guy here instead to meet the quota.”

The cashier slumped over the POS, hands clasped comically. “Oh, fuck no. I got class tomorrow, dude. Can’t you kidnap the Gothamart night shift down the block—?”

“Gothamart’s got cameras and a kidnapping policy now. Bougie fucks. Goddamn Bruce Wayne.”

“Ah, so that’s the reason for my wage. Too damn good to be true…”

And with that, a blur of red, yellow, and green came propelling through the glass front door sending the entire store into a frenzied chaos.

With their momentum, the blur swung feet first into one of the masked men who went crashing into a rack pushing down the row of shelving down like dominoes. At its stop, Nero stood at the end of the row with the majority of the tall shelves now in a pile before him, every head now turned to his seemingly sudden appearance. Blue Rose's chamber already halfway loaded through the debacle, Nero lent a wry grin to his audience.

“Dave. Larry.” Nero nodded at blank expressions. “You guys doing some late night shopping, too?”

Silence.

…Tough crowd. At the stilted quiet, Nero sparked into action with a flick of his wrist, the double chambers of the Blue Rose spun wildly in their barrels before clicking into place. He pulled the trigger unloading twin bullets towards the demonic bunch. In his peripheral, he saw the more human bunch begin to jump back into action like chickens who’d suddenly found their heads again.

The demons, however, running more on instinct than logic had already began scaling the ruins of the aisles towards him.

Nero looked towards the counter where a shellshocked cashier stood wide eyed and the girls who’d ran in crouched in front screaming at the glass and bullets. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder and rushed forward to get in the path of one of demons running towards them. “Get to the exit, now!”

The disinterested one had begun crawling over the ruined rows of merchandise squealed in pain as Nero’s shot met their mark between a leg joint with an awful sort of wet crunch. The thing looked vaguely human like some demons did at times, it’s head enlarged and split into two halves a whole, in it’s middle a barely humanoid face twisted in agony as it bisected the more reptilian looking sides.

The trio of civilians slid out the door just as it’s elongated bony limbs crumpled over each other and teetered off balance as it writhed. Small dragon like wings on its back fluttered manically as it attempted get away and reorient itself towards him.

“Man, you’re an ugly one, aren’t you?” Nero mockingly consoled as he lazily sidestepped a swipe from the demon he hadn’t shot at yet to stand over the wounded one.

Before it could get up, Nero let loose another double shot point blank, inwardly groaning as it’s innards spattered across the bottom of his jeans. The demon twitched wildly before slumping limply at his feet. “Hope that helped a bit!”

Almost as if learning it’s lesson from its predecessor, the demon’s bigger and bulkier twin didn’t let Nero get an opportunity to get close and personal. The rapid shots Nero did fire from a wider distance away skated off it’s abnormally waxy, tough blue exoskeleton. Tossing it’s horned head and swinging it’s back end crumpled metal iceboxes and shattered glass in an instant. Nero didn’t want to know what would happen if he got hit straight on by it.

Seemingly angered by his dodging, the demon let out a raspy screech that made the hairs on his neck stand straight up. It trailed off and began to click its teeth, a foul smelling green ooze beginning to drip from it.

The blurry figure that had mostly been knocking kidnapper heads in his peripheral this whole time froze the same moment as Nero did. For a second, Nero wondered if he also felt like someone had just walked over his grave. The awful wrongness dissipated as the blur barely ducked beneath a jab aimed at him.

With one hand outstretched with the Blue Rose aimed at its leg, he reached back with this right to grab the hilt of the Red Queen—

Ah, shit.

Nero’s hand swiped through empty air halfway through remembering the Red Queen still getting fixed up in Lady’s possession.

Correcting his course he instead lifted the Blue Rose towards its torso—

THUNK! A heavy metal object whacked into the side of his head.

“Motherfucker—” Nero’s shot went wide, shooting out a light in the ceiling enveloping the area in a darkness only illuminated by the deathly blue-green of the beast before him. Shooting a glance back where one of the kidnappers stood triumphant with a can of soup.

Oh, hell no. If Nero dies today via canned goods, Dante would resurrect him just to laugh at him.

In less than a second, the demon closed the distance between them. Nero attempted to fix his aim for the demon’s widening jaws when an explosion knocked the beast off its course and in a wall.

As plaster rained down from the ceiling where the demon had knocked a hole through the concrete wall, Nero’s head snapped to where the blast had come from. Belatedly, a remembered the colorful blur that had fallen into the crowd of would-be-kidnappers from seemingly nowhere and he was met with a boy half a head shorter than him.

The soup thrower was now crumpled on the ground clutching a crooked nose— yeah, fuck that guy— and his savior stood above him twirling a ring, no, a grenade pin around one of his fingers. Nero zeroed in on the white lenses domino mask, the traffic light color scheme, cape and green boots.

It also wasn’t hard to miss the gigantic letter R brightly emblazoned across his heart like a signal. Wait, did Robin have a signal light or was that just Batman?

Before he could ask, the demon shaped hole in the wall screamed in rage and a staggering mass began to claw its way back into the room. Without the Red Queen, Nero had wondered how he was going to get close enough to get through its armor without having to slice it open with the force of a car engine. Now that it was confused…

Nero rolled his right shoulder, reaching for the familiar yet new energy that coalesced into a solid form. Sweeping his hand outwards, Yamato crystallized into view, icy and ravenous as usual. It wasn’t any Red Queen with her bells and whistles that Nero had so painstakingly spent nights tacking on out of the view of Credo and his other Order mates who found it sacrilegious.

But Nero could appreciate the simple beauty of Yamato’s subtle design— at least when it came to the blade itself. Using it’s ability was an entirely different story and why Nero mostly stuck to the Red Queen from day to day. The last time Nero had accidentally cut a massive hole in space time, Dante had been utterly delighted while Nero had a conniption.

Breathing slowly, Nero thumbed the guard, clicking it free from it’s scabbard. With one clean motion, he brought the edge down on the remaining demon, leaving the store quiet and bereft of hellish screaming.

Nero made sure to flick off any remaining residue on it before sheathing it again. Instead of letting his Devil Bringer absorb it again, he hung it over one of his shoulders. Without the Red Queen, he felt a little bare.

Dante, although easygoing most of the time, was pretty adamant on sword care. Where the Rebellion found its place swung over Dante’s back, blood or not, Yamato pulled a strange quiet reverence from him. It made sense to Nero; if he’d had any family heirlooms other than that raggedy old black blanket Fortuna’s orphanage had found him in, he’d be anal about lending it off to someone who wouldn’t take care of it well.

Just as Nero was about to make his quick escape out of the soon-to-be-swarmed-with-cops store, he was stopped in his tracks.

“Who are you.” The demand came from behind him and Nero turned to find a crumpled pile of human goons on the ground already tied up against the counter. Robin stalked forward, grabbing the hilt of a blade that had been jammed into a pile of rubble nearby.

Nero brushed plaster off of the one package still intact on the counter— Dante’s request, per usual. Nero scowled, rolling his eyes and pushing it off to join the rest of his unfortunate order.

“Pizza delivery.”

Robin scoffed, lifting the the tip of his blade— a katana, Nero’s brain chimed in recognition— high enough that he could see the gleam of the shop’s neon open sign reflected in perfect mimicry off its edge. Nero distantly wondered if there was some niche law to be broken if he pulled out Yamato on the Robin but honestly the more he thought about it, it probably would just fall under child abuse.

“You know what those things are, don’t you?”

Nero hummed, taking one out of Dante’s be annoying and cryptic as fuck playbook. “I dunno. What’s it to you, boy wonder?”

“You’re in Gotham, slaying beasts with a magical sword. I believe that makes it directly my business, outsider.”

What a welcome wagon. Still, he had a point there.

Before he could reply with something equally as snarky, a voice piped up at the counter. “Hey, man. Are y’all supers done fightin’ now? I gotta pee.”

Larry, no, Dave— well, whoever it was, one of the goons that had argued at the front of the counter and later thrown a soup can at his head sat up tied in steel cables. The rest were out for the count, scattered around him and groaning. “Don’t you kiddos got daycare tomorrow?”

Nero sighed, flicked his wrist, and the empty bullet casings rolling out of the Blue Rose's dual chambers like a charm. And before they could clink against the linoleum flooring, he’d already reloaded and twirled her back into the makeshift holster in his inner coat lining. The guy was lucky he was sheathing her instead of using him as target practice.

Robin rose to attention, his expression cold. “Well, maybe we should get you back to your nursing home, old man.”

“Old? Old! I’ll be thirty in—”

The kid just yawned, turning away to refocus on the mess around them. Nero snorted— the kid was petty. Kind of a riot, too.

As LarryDave kept chattering off in the background, Robin walked off deeper into the store to begin photographing and sampling the demons Nero had left behind.

“I wouldn’t mess with those.” Nero said trailing behind, glaring at LarryDave who’d gave up on needling them and begun to sing an off tune drinking song.

Robin tapped the side of his domino mask and Nero could see the flicker of a HUD screen behind the white lenses. He carefully observed the remains with a distant calculation. “Would you like to tell me what they are?”

Nero shrugged, leaning on one of the still standing shelves. “Would you believe me if I did?”

Robin gave him a deadpan expression, scalpel and sample tube in hand, seemingly pulled from that endless hammerspace belt he had around his waist. He capped it with a thumb and began making to put it away when Nero reached out to grab his wrist. He of course was met with the glint of a R-shaped throwing star in his peripheral, Robin pulling his gauntlet free from his grasp with a a hiss.

“I’m sure you’ve seen me and my ilk fight aliens and Halloween costumed criminals on a regular basis. I do not believe you are as important as you think you are.”

Okay, rude. “Still, nothing good comes from messing around with things you don’t understand. Science and this stuff don’t exactly mix in the best ways.”

Nero immediately was reminded of Agnus and the crazed fervor he had in his eyes as he regaled Nero with his exploits of scientific discovery. Everyone knew the Bats were more gadgets and sleuthing than the mad science type but Nero had also thought the Order the pinnacle of goodness as one point too, didn’t he?

“Then enlighten me.”

Robin pointed the tip of his blade at the corpse of the demon, well, now that it been defeated, what was looking to be the sort of artificial demon Nero had become familiar with during his time on Fortuna.

Gone were the misshapen wings and bony spinal ridges. Without a sign of the sick blue-green energy pulsing from its visible veins, Nero was almost positive the being in front of him had been human once upon a time. It’s base anyway. Looking at mismatched limbs, and stitches stretching across its body, Nero couldn’t be exactly sure where the person had ended and the demon began.

It felt as though someone had tried to implement human medicine as a aid to the transformation more than the familiar alchemy he was used to. He didn’t envy whatever transformation the person had gone through to have been throwing around foul energy like that.

He’d say it all smelled of something extremely similar to Agnus’ brand of dubious alchemy and obsession with demonic magic but there was some other aspect to it that Nero didn't recognize.

“They’re… human. Sorta. Artificial demons.” Nero sighed. “Though the zombie ooze is new.”

There was always something new when it came to Nero, really.

“And the reason you know this? You were obviously expecting to hunt them here.”

“Names Nero. I’m a private demon hunter from Devil May Cry. Dunno if you ever heard of us. We’re based in Red Grave.” Nero swallowed the small lie he’d just flat out spoke to Robin— the Robin. As in partner to Batman, defender of justice and enemy of big, fat liars, Nero was pretty sure.

It’s not like he was pretending to be Dante or something. He was associated with Devil May Cry in some sense if being the weird cult orphan that the guy kept letting tag along on his jobs was adjacent to ‘employee’.

Instead, he latched onto the indignation of being given fetch duty despite literally kicking major ass not even ten minutes ago— the very real danger that a bunch of unsuspecting people were about to be in with Dante nowhere to be seen.

Nero straightened his back, more than faux titles fueling him. Dante’s pizza would have to wait— Nero had actual important things to be doing.

“Heard about a recent gathering of low level demons here in Gotham but I think we might be dealing with something a bit more.” Nero regarded the bodies by their feet.

“Demons…” Even through the weird off white lenses of his mask, Nero could recognize the flicker of recognition in his features. “Odd to find them here in Gotham. We don’t usually get trouble of the magical sort. Justice League Dark usually handles those issues before they enter our territory. I wonder why I have not seen Constantine or Zatanna about…”

“Constantine?” Nero wracked his brain over the familiar name. A vague memory of stumbling into a rowdy poker game gone fist fight and later the hungover form of Dante and a man in a tan overcoat passed out on the floor. “Oh yeah, I think he owes Dante some money? Or is it the opposite…”

Scoffing, Robin mumbled under his breath, “It would not surprise me if he did…”

Shifting the topic, Robin focused back on him. “I suppose your meta abilities are based around some sort of space manipulation, then?”

Nero froze to where Robin looked at his right arm, he wondered if his coat had slipped or been cut and he’d seen the obviously demonic arm he had but he looked down to see where he’d slung Yamato over his shoulder. Nero shrugged, internally bracing for the long run taking credit for Yamato’s feats. “Ah, yeah. Something like that.”

Robin hummed, already looking away to bend down and observe the area where that neon substance had poured from the mouth of the hybrid’s vessel.

“Was there any chance of survival for the human vessels?”

The boy stared solemnly, and in the back of his mind, Nero reminded himself this kid had probably seen dozens if not hundred of crime scenes as a vigilante. Still, you never forget the first time you meet a demon.

“Depends. I’ve seen some wake up completely normal after getting the shit kicked out of them, some others barely get hurt and still never wake up. But these people look like they’ve been on the end of someone who has no clue what they’re doing.” Though Nero knew that even a successful transformation wouldn’t save someone sometimes. At times, he let himself wonder if he’d gone to Credo sooner, maybe there would've been a person other than Dante who could understand what demonic transformation felt like. Someone he could call family anyway.

“Wish we’d gotten here sooner.” Nero mumbled, hiding the way he rubbed at his right side by crossing his arms over his chest.

Robin nodded, rising to his normal height. “These demons seem to be a foul sort of creature…”

Nero’s right armed itched and he pulled the sleeve of his coat over the edge of the gloves he’d been wearing in the Gotham weather.

Turning back, Robin focused on Nero and he forced himself still. “As you are probably aware, I am Robin. Batman is currently indisposed with another matter of greater importance.”

The vigilante sniffed, seemingly over with his impromptu interrogation. “Seeing that you expertise in this area, I will be joining you on your search for the missing and these ‘demons’ you speak of.”

Robin stood up from his crouch, swirling a vial of red blood at eye level. He then slotted the tube into a handheld device he pulled from his belt and Nero watched with interest as heard the mechanics star to whir. “I believe I know what the green substance that powered them is, but I cannot be sure. Especially since I am unfamiliar with demon biology.”

Dusting his hands off, Robin moved on to sample the other demonic hybrid near by. “Testing a sample would give us more information but I believe the effect recedes upon defeat. Still, perhaps traces remain.”

Nero hummed, also silently going over the memory of eerie green-blue light and the demonic pulse that radiated from the hybrids before running out of juice. He wondered faintly where he’d felt a similar reaction to demonic energy that it stuck with him so.

Shaking the thought away, he turned back to LarryDave glaring. “That last trick at the end was pretty ballsy… just out of curiosity, what were you gonna do after it killed us and you were still tied to this counter like a stuck pig?”

The man scowled, spitting at his feet.

Typical.

“Gonna tell us why you needed those people for?”

“I don’t know! Boss’ got all of us running around doing jobs. I just drive the van.”

What a load of shit, Nero had heard better excuses from kids Robin’s age with their hands stuck in the cookie jar. “Well, you don’t drive to your secret lair with your eyes up your ass do you? Spill.”

“Fuck you, man! That brat broke my nose!”

Robin, seemingly tired of brooding in the corner in faux calm silence lashed out and drew his blade to push in front of the goon’s face. “Tell us, fool, or I’ll remove it from your face!”

“Bull! Batman would put you in timeout or some shit—”

For a second, when all Nero saw was the glint of a blade come down he was sure he was gonna see the idiot’s nose flopping on the ground. Instead, the katana swiped the front of LarryDave’s bangs clean off him. Its remains floated onto his nose as the guy yelped.

“Alright! Jesus, its your funeral, kid. You wanna go play hero? Be my guest. They won’t let you through the front gates without a delivery.”

“Delivery?”

“Three of them ran out that back door, thanks to you, new guy.”

“Where?”

“All the way back home in the Alley probably.”

“The delivery point, smartass.”

LarryDave looked like he wanted to exchange some foul language in turn, but bit his tongue. Instead, Nero received a withering look. “Dunno exactly. The meetup points been that new Ace Chemicals plant on Arkham Island.”

Robin cocked his head. “The one near the old Manor?”

“The very one.”

With a nod, Robin began to walk away towards the now jammed sliding doors. Turning to the side and slipping from the glass panes, Nero followed and ignored LarryDave’s shouting to not leave him to the cops seeing as he only ‘drove the car’.

Nero shivered as soon as they got outside, the Gotham air biting through his coat. Robin remained unaffected in what Nero was becoming less convinced was spandex from the lack of shivering. Typing something into the gauntlet on his wrist, he spoke up. “I have intelligence that Scarecrow’s taken up that area as a base lately. Usually, I have a partner along, but I suppose you’ll be investigating anyway?”

Nero blinked, awkwardly pulling Yamato over his shoulder again as it slipped. “Yeah…?”

With a judgemental look on his face, Robin looked at where Nero was still trying to use Yamato as a Red Queen stand in. “This is not your main weapon?”

“Ah, no. I mean, I’ve got the Red Queen. She’s more falchion than katana so I’m a bit new to the details.” Nero’s eyes trailed to the katana Robin had at his own side. “Yours is sick though. That move set at the end you did was something else.”

“Tch.” Robin said, turning away quickly. Before Nero could ask what the hell ‘tch’ means, he continued on. “So how do you suppose we get there without the ‘delivery’?”

Nero could here the quotations in Robin’s tone of voice, he guessed the guy was above using his fingers for it. Nero shrugged, a reckless sort of energy building in him. Some came from Yamato who hadn’t stopped humming since they’d cut through those demons, the rest from pure exhaustion from sitting on his ass all day.

“You know what? I think these guys might be real quantity over quality guys. Maybe we should reverse that.”

Robin paused, turning back slowly with his lenses narrowed white slits of suspicion.

Nero picked up one of the dollar Halloween masks LarryDave and the others had been wearing. Tossing a spare burlap sack around his neck like a hood and slipping the devil mask over his face, he took a bunch of rope tied at one of the guys’ waists. “…Think I could pass for a Dave?”

Robin closed his eyes, tilting his head back towards the sky. Catching on, he replied gritted through his teeth. “I find it exceedingly generous that ‘Dave’ would’ve been able to restrain me—”

Nero hopped into the front of the van, already vibrating with energy over the fact that he now had his own mode of transportation around this cursed city. Honestly, he blamed Dante for kicking his ass to the curb in the middle of nowhere. Of course he was going to end up in the middle of the case somehow. Having stolen the key’s in LarryDave’s pocket, he popped them into the ignition and revved. When the van rumbled to life, Nero grinned. “A Larry, then.”

Robin said nothing and sighed.

---

Larry watched helplessly as the white haired Robin loosely tied up the dark haired one in the back of his van before they drove off into the Gotham night. In the distance, he could hear the faint police sirens coming around the block. Kicking a bit of rubble and slumping back onto the snoring lump under him that was Dave, he cursed.

“Crazy fuckin’ sword Robins…”

Chapter 2: ...and the devil you don't

Notes:

NO I SEE YOU

There was something loose in Gotham City.

Of course, Tim knew that was most days in Gotham, if he was honest.

Usually, they were of the mutated crocodile or killer clown variety. ‘Possession’ cases or reports of ghosts and other anomalies in Gotham were common for the city and its gothic reputation.

With how much B cracked down on actual magic users and meta ability usage in the city, more often than not these instances could be explained away by victims of fear toxin or Joker venom or whatever pollen Ivy’s plant of the day did. 

As he emptied out Pyg’s new hideout that leeched into Crime Alley, Tim was starting to think there was something much more sinister afoot than the usual suspects. Reports of monsters appearing and disappearing, a strange sulfur smell coming from sinkholes in the ground, earthquakes only small areas of people reported that couldn’t be felt city wide? If there’s one thing for sure, Jason would have never let this fly.

“Please! He told me he was— he was!”

“Ma’am, I promise everything’s gonna be alright now. We just gotta get you out of here…”

“N-no! You don’t understand, those things. He didn’t use humans, he used monsters…”

And wasn’t that just delightful. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what she was talking about. Before he’d come across the room housing Pyg’s next batch of victims, he’d seen the main space in the high ceiling warehouse. Metal crates were filled to the brim with inhuman body parts, some scaled, others skin like. Horns, wings, long bony limbs and armored bodies full of teeth. Tim had caught a glimpse of a tray of chemicals nearby on a dissection table that emitted an oddly familiar green-blue glow, but before he could take samples, he had to slip away as Pyg rounded a corner singing operatic tunes in that creepy voice of his.

Tim hoped it didn’t show how unsettled he was on his face and as he began to usher the woman out through the window he propelled a handful of other people through just minutes before. He was about to begin securing a harness to the woman who continued to whisper an unintelligible mumble of terror filled thoughts when a burst of hot air blew across the side of his neck.

Tim stumbled back, instinctively pulling the woman behind him as the barely humanoid figure rose from what Tim had earlier written off as a mess of mismatched tangled limbs. Where a its face might of been, a set of bull like horns protruded from the sides of its head, a waxy sheen illuminating what Tim realize wasn’t blood but a green-blue glow of hard calcified skin— almost like a reptile’s scales. The figure before him screamed of a child-like idea of how a dragon-man might look like if they existed.

Whatever Pyg had gotten his hands on, it was absolutely not human or animal.

Stumbling towards them, Tim observed it’s deteriorated state and the Y-shaped incision marks that started at it’s sternum and made its way down to it’s navel. Tim clenched his teeth, disgust and hot anger filling his body just thinking of what poor soul Pyg had used for it’s base. Monstrous or not, no one deserved to be picked apart like that.

Ditching his own half tied harness, he make-shifted a spare bundle of rope at his waist secure himself to the one he’d attached to the woman instead.

Before it could reach them, Tim swung his body weight as hard as he could, the harness shaky under the weight of both him and the woman. Out of the creature’s pathway, the beast went full speed ahead off the edge of railings. It’s small wings began to flap futilely but Tim knew either the way Pyg had assembled it or from the way it had grown, nothing could save it.

With one last roar, it turned backwards scrambling for the edge, missing, and tumbling down into the darkness below. An almost confused expression across it’s human enough face before a loud crack echoed at the bottom of the warehouse and only silence followed after it.

After a long quiet moment, Tim and the woman remained suspended over the abyss breathing shallowly.

“Why didn’t it just fly away?” The woman whispered over his shoulder, still shaking.

“I… don’t think it could.” Tim spoke barely above her own volume, swinging back towards their exit at the window.

As soon as their feet touched back onto the solid ground of the window ledge, Tim attached a more secure clip to the grapple that was buried into the concrete on their end of the rope and led to the alley ground where he’d left a small group of people earlier. From the way the gate at the start of the alley swung in the wind next to a pair of bolt cutters, he assumed they’d all already gotten the hell out of dodge.

Before he helped her propel down, she grabbed his forearm, teary eyed. “That… creature. It wasn’t working with Pyg, was it.”

Tim remained silent, a theory already building in his head. "I’m not sure, ma’am, but I’m going to find out.”

The lady nodded, seeming more calm than before. Patting his shoulder, she tried to offer a small smile. “You stay safe. Okay, Red?'“

“I try to.”

And with that she soared down into the alley, unclipping herself at the bottom and waving up at him before running off through the gates on her own.

Tim found Pyg back in the warehouse furiously pacing before the corpse of the fallen creature, kicking it every few steps while cursing at it. Still fresh from the moment of understanding he and the woman had shared, Tim ruthlessly sent a bola soaring towards the man, a burst of satisfaction in his gut when the man landed on his face kicking and squealing.

As Pyg twisted on the ground laughing to himself he continued to speak. “That rotting sack of burlap gave me faulty materials! That's why, yes, that's why my cures failed… yes!”

The light of the moon crept from one of the warehouse's high windows, illuminating the large room before him. And even tied up next to the corpse of the tortured creature, Red Robin felt that Pyg was the most monstrous thing in that room.

---

Tim tried not to shiver at the empty eyed, dark look Pyg had as he muttered fervently at the alley wall he was pressed against. No matter how many times he and Bruce had come across his cruel work, it was always terrifying to see how the man regarded the people he hurt as little more than ‘faulty material’. 

It had been a while since he had gone through the rooms of the warehouse Pyg holed himself in and Tim was glad to be outside even if it meant listening to whatever drivel the man had to say while he was there. Being inside, with every room he went through, it felt like stepping into another layer of hell even the Divine Comedy itself would have trouble replicating.

Tim tapped at the screen on his gauntlet as he opened the comm lines. Rogues crossing paths was not a new thing in Gotham, with how many of them used the city as their stomping ground you were bound to see a pair or two every so often.

But the experimentation Pyg called ‘art’ seemed to be way beyond the usual makeup of his Dollotrons. The fact that he admitted Scarecrow had a hand in whatever mutation he’d just witnessed and even that being miles away from Scarecrow’s usual MO was concerning.

But before he could get Bruce on the line a sound from behind him made the alarm bells in his head go off.

Anyone else probably would’ve ignored the faint shuffle of gravel beneath feet, but in Tim’s line of work, he knew better. Pretending to fiddle with something on his gauntlet, he slowly pulled a thin roll of sharp wire from a hidden spool at his wrist, a freshly sharpened throwing star slipping into his fingers.

The familiar click of a safety catch echoed in the near silent alleyway and Tim spun around, R-shaped metal throwing stars already flying to it’s mark. Attached to it’s end, the spool of wire he’d laced onto it wrapped around the arm of a white haired man.

In his hands, the pale white M1911 style handgun’s shot went off to the side, enough to miss what would’ve been a point blank shot to the center of Pyg’s head.

“Who…”

Belatedly, Tim realized while he had own of the man’s arms caught, his other raised another all black twin gun in his other back up to it’s course to which Tim yanked the cord in his hands with all his strength.

The wire bit harshly into his hands, even with the thick gloves and gauntlet he’d had on as well. Even though he guy barely moved an inch, it was enough. His second shot clipped Pyg’s ear and the tied up man squealed before falling back against the pavement.

Tim quickly realized his beat up red coat seemingly hid strength equal to Bane when in response to the yanking, the man simply tugged the binds between then and within a moment, his feet left the ground.

“Holy shit!” Tim let go of the wire, his body already twisting in familiar spirals from his time as Robin. Any other person would have gone soaring into the heavy metal dumpster and earned a Grade I concussion. Tim on the other hand, put the extra momentum into his sudden acrobatics.

Now perching on the dumpster in the alley, he looked up at the assassin with a frown. “Not cool, dude.”

The assassin spent little time ripping thick, banded metal cable from where it should have been cutting circulation in his arm. Tim reassessed as he watched the man use his hands to pull it apart like tissue paper even though a rather large looking greatsword stood at the ready on his back.

“I get it. The guy’s pretty high on my shit list, too. Still can’t let you do that.”

Even without a response, he was not letting the man recover.

Tim unfolded his bo tossing a smoke bomb mid air, and using it like a club to bat a home run straight in his face where it exploded upon impact. Tim tapped the side of his head, activating the heat sensors in his domino mask and centered in on Pyg who still writhed on the ground.

Making his way over to the Professor, meaning to spirit him away in all the fog, he was stopped in his tracks by a too fast burst of motion at his side. He pulled up his bo, only to meet the hand of the assassin. In his eyes, he appeared as a glowing orange mass of heat. The guy was quick, he’ll give him that.

Instead of trying to play a game of tug-o-war he knew he wouldn’t win, he twisted the bo at its base.

Dick had given him some schematics the last time he took a trip away from Blüdhaven for an early birthday gift. Tim hadn’t really had the time to test them properly, knowing that he’d probably gone overboard tweaking the base designs. With this asshole though, there was no time like the present!

ZRINGGGG!

All it took was a single click and a giant burst of electricity arced over the man in front of him, his hand still looked to be clenched around the tip of the bo. Tim would’ve let the mechanism run longer if he didn’t feel the foreboding wet drop of water against his skin. Not sparing a glance up and away from his opponent, Tim let the miniature lightning sputter out the man’s grip loose enough to spin away.

Within moments, all lingering smoke vanished in the sudden humidity and Tim was left to glare at the still standing figure of the man before him. As if sensing Tim’s annoyance, the jerk shook his hand out like he had just jammed his finger in a door instead of being introduced to enough voltage to send a rhino to the morgue.

Upping the ante, the man began to draw his sword and he turned his back to Tim like he didn’t even need to worry about being hit in the back.

Instead of giving the guy the satisfaction of a bo to the head, Tim lobbed a magnetic anchor over all of their heads. Activating as soon as it hit the ground, Pyg sailed across the alley floor with a yelp towards the gadget.

The man sighed dramatically, turning his head over his shoulder with a deadpan expression that immediately twisted when Tim met him with a sweet smile and rolled one of his bigger grenades at the guy’s feet.

Sue a guy, Tim was feeling petty and he was pretty sure the jackass could take it.

FWOOOSHH!

As a fiery blaze engulfed the figure, Tim barely had time to feel guilty before the man burst out of the flames patting away where the explosion had merely begun burning away the plain white shirt he used to have on under his long, red leather coat.

Before he could try anything else, the distance between them closed and suddenly Tim had his feet knocked from under him, cape catching against the tip of a greatsword as he was pinned to the ground in a blurry motion of rain and gravel.

With the air knocked out of him, he blinked rapidly towards the sky that was pouring now. The flames from his grenade earlier already growing smaller beneath the rain as he grasped outwards for the bo that was knocked from his grip.

The assassin stared down from where the he stood precariously on Tim’s forearm, a heavy threatening weight pushing down ever so slightly. His hand immediately spasmed and the ceramic coated magnesium alloyed staff clattered noisily as it rolled away.

With his other arm bent awkwardly behind him when he fell, the sharp edge of his greatsword pressed into Tim’s cheek as he struggled to get free. The man shifted, a small nudge of the hilt and the blade pressed down, cool and wet metal closer to his neck.

Tim stilled and glared back up at the man above him.

“No offense, kid. You’re good.” The assassin shrugged, his shock of pale white hair falling into icy blue eyes. With a sharp tooth grin, he swung his greatsword over his shoulder like an umbrella, only the walk in the park he was about to take was in Park Row and the mild weather he was strolling in was one of Gotham’s worst thunderstorms. “Just think I’m at the wrong level right now.”

BANG!

He couldn’t help the violent flinch that tore through his body, the sharp noise felt physical as a sharp gasp left Tim’s mouth. He was almost entirely convinced he’d been shot.

When the adrenaline died down and the pressure from his arm and neck left, all Tim was left with was a cold feeling of dread that wasn’t from the rain.

Scrambling onto his hands and knees, he looked up to silently look ahead to where he’d left the target of the assassin. There was no love between him and Pyg out of all of Gotham’s Rogues, especially after everything he’d seen in that warehouse.

But seeing the man’s still warm, wide eyed corpse pressed against wet, dirty alley gravel was a sorry sight, especially with how sudden it all felt.

Getting up from his pathetic muddy state on the ground, Tim dizzily leaned against the alley wall and tried not to vomit. Vertigo hit him as he held a hand to where a footprint had been bruised purple on his forearm, traveling up to thin rivers of blood that met from his cheek to his neck.

Tim only gave himself a moment to breathe and think about things like cold metal, red coats, and a heavy menacing pressure before shakily reopening the comm line and calling Bruce.

---

“White hair?”

Tim had caught Bruce in the middle of the gala from what he heard in the background. The tinny speakers echoing laughing and champagne popping through his portable watch speaker. It was grating his ears but Tim didn’t have the energy to nag and he just continued to plaster his wounds.

“Yeah, his whole head. Definitely white haired, nothing like platinum blonde.” Tim looked at the dent in the wall where the man had been thrown into the brick wall via grenade. “And he was either meta or non-human. Like Bane on even more steroids.”

The background noise died down and the sound sharpened as Tim heard the click of a door and Alfred’s gentle voice guiding Bruce to a soundproof room, he assumed.

“Red Robin, you need to report back to cave immediately.”

Tim laughed, half lightly wondering if this was Bruce trying to wiggle his way out of a gala night. God, what he wouldn’t give to be at a gala right now instead of stepping in what was probably a puddle of his own blood and Pyg’s guts. “What?”

“The man you came in contact with is not to be engaged lightly.”

“Yeah, no kidding. He put a Rogue in the dirt, B. I’ve got eyes.” Tim shook his head, refocusing. After he send a silent beacon out for GCPD to find the remains of the crime scene being washed away by the rain, he began putting in the coordinates of his next destination. Absently, he spoke to Bruce in the background. “I’ve got a lead and the longer I wait, the greater chances are that—”

“We will deal with this case in time, but not with you patrolling alone with this killer on the loose.”

Tim sent over a file he’d compiled during his search and rescue of Pyg’s base. Making sure he attached the video of his latest experiment, he spoke over Bruce’s lecturing. “You didn't see what Pyg had gotten involved with B, I think his killer is the least of our issues.”

“A man was assassinated tonight, this is far from a minor issue.”

Feeling his eye twitch, Tim breathed in the smell of petrichor and his own copper scented blood mixed in deeply, letting the words wash over him. “And I never said it was. But B, you don't get it, I think Pyg wasn't just working with who I think he was, it's something bigger than that—”

“Return to the Cave, Robin, that's an order.”

Okay, well now Bruce was starting to get on Tim’s nerves. “It’s Red Robin. And if you would listen, you can ditch the gala, I’ll send you the details and we can meet at—”

“I said return home now, Jason!”

Being called by Jason’s name felt the same as getting all the air knocked out of his lungs again. Determined to not immediately begin shouting after the day he had, Tim let out a breath and stood still for a moment trying not to say something he would regret in return. “…It’s been a while since that happened.”

“Red Robin, I—”

“You know, these lines aren't that secure with Oracle out this week. You should really watch whose name you're saying, Batman, it might give you away.”

“Do not engage this man on your own, Red Robin. I have reason to believe he’s connected to the disappearance of—”

Tim cut in, walking away from Pyg’s now rain cooled body to the bike he’d left just outside the alley. He went through the motions, kicking up the stand of his bike calmly starting the engine. “Just a little recon, I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“See you around, B. Red Robin out.” Despite the raised voice sounding in his ear, Tim raised a finger up to his comms and cut the connection. The immediate silence gave Tim a moment to think about his next steps.

‘Burlap sack’, huh. Tim thought back to what Pyg had babbled before he died. “Guess we should go find ourselves a Scarecrow.”

And with a rev of his bike’s engine, he thundered out into the wet Gotham streets and a bird soared away into the night.

Chapter 3: speak of the devil

Bruce cursed as the line went dead. The call screen on his phone flickered off and went back to Tim’s contact profile. It was an older photo with his hair a wild mess and a rare face splitting grin. It pained him to know he couldn’t quite recall if it was from a festival or fair or simply at the manor but he stared long enough for the automatic sleep function to go off and the reflective surface to go black. Bruce took a long look at his own haggard expression and wondered if he could put off showing his face in public for another month to go running after another reckless son.

“Is everything alright, my boy?” Alfred spoke from behind him, peering through the doorway with the tie he’d asked the man to find before the comm call with Tim. The sound proof seal broken by light and the crowd of people below them where he’d purposefully ran into Vicki Vale, getting red wine on his tie to be able to pick up the emergency call that had rattled the alarm on his watch halfway through the party.

“Tim… won’t be joining us for dinner today.”

“Ah, I see. I assume some late night work has him tied up at the moment?”

Bruce closed his eyes and pushed his fingers into his temple. If this gala wasn’t a literal floor below him, he’d already be dragging Alfred down to the Cave to man the comms as he chased after the mess Tim didn’t know he was getting into. The last thing he wanted was another son to—

“Yes, I suppose I’ll have to deal with the investors without him.”

“A shame. Though, I was going to simply console you on missing your outing with the young lad.”

Though he was sure it wasn’t on his face, Bruce’s chest twinged with another wave of worry. He wondered what he’d done recently for Alfred to needle at him to early into the night.

Bruce wanted to trust that Tim could take care of himself, that he really was just doing a bit of recon before returning even in his anger. But the sick feeling in his stomach gained from years of surviving what this city had to offer him told him something completely different. Call it instinct, call it paranoia. Bruce knew something was going wrong this night.

“I do believe you were in the middle of a negotiation before Master Tim phoned. Would you like to continue it or shall I reconnect you to him in quieter room?”

Translation: would you like to refocus on the task at hand or shall I start a fire, empty the ballroom, and prep the Batmobile for an outing?

Bruce sighed, knowing Alfred would know his decision simply from some sound in his voice he himself was not privy to. Like magic, the man gracefully stepped forward, looping the replacement tie around his neck and deftly knotting it. As he straightened his lapel, the man patted him on his shoulder before gesturing to the door back into the viper pit below.

“Do not fret, Master Bruce. I will be keeping a close eye on the phones in case Master Tim calls back with more dire circumstances. The car will be ready shortly.”

As they walked back down the hall to where stragglers lingered outside the large ballroom doors, Bruce could only nod silently, It was only the knowledge that Damian was far from all of this, still grounded from field work and due to come home a week from now after being on the ground in Smallville.

With that he pushed himself to go back into the crowd already planning the quickest course to get to the cave and follow Tim’s lead.

Logically, he knew his being here was the best course of action. Delegate tasks. Gather information here, let capable hands handle recon out there. He could not solve the influx of unknown magical energy ravaging the Alley in the next five minutes it took for Alfred to ready the Batmobile. He could not find Tim in the next minute or solve his case within the next second.

All this, and still… Bruce worried.

He was bombarded by memories, of knowing the Batmobile’s engine was still not fast enough, his mind still not as sharp as it could be. History repeating and a cursed night just a month ago that had left Bruce racing towards a scene he played again and again in his worse nightmares.

An overturned bike. Blood. A discarded red helmet and tracker shattered on the pavement. Blurry camera footage of a haggard, white haired man leaving the scene— and now Tim running off to chase a ghost Bruce had been trying to sniff out for weeks. A lead, finally. But at what cost?

Sometimes Bruce wondered when he would stop feeling like he’s trading one son for another. He wondered after so long, if Jason was even—

Blinking rapidly, Bruce exhaled long and hard to reoriented himself on the ballroom floor. He was holding a still full glass of fake alcohol Alfred had shoved in his hands before pushing him out the door. Bruce threw back the lukewarm apple cider wishing it were real alcohol for a sliver of a moment.

He pulled the details of the conversation he was currently having into the forefront of his mind and refocused on the woman before him decked out in white and sterling silver.

“You see, you and your constituents now own the area my father inherited after my grandfather’s passing. He left everything to his decedents, including his facilities and research, not the public, and certainly not a private corporation such as yourself…”

Bruce hummed in response, dragging up a practiced script he always had in his head for these types of situations. “And you have my deepest apologies, but the land there has been condemned and deemed unsafe for some time. I assure you, its with your best interest that we move on to assuring you see some form of compensation, miss…?”

Bruce tried for an apologetic smile knowing he wasn’t the best of company at the moment. He felt the slightest twinge of guilt as he saw the woman barely hold back a scoff as she shook her head, dark ebony hair fell just before her chin, reminding Bruce of Cassandra’ s choice of cut. “It’s Lady. Er, Arkham.”

“Right. As I was saying, Lady Arkham—”

Some instinct screamed at Bruce to look up, and for a foolish moment he wondered if this was the distraction Alfred had made to let him slip away. Before he could fully regain his bearings, an angel came crashing through the skylights.

---

If Dante had a nickel for every time he’d been on a job, ended up having to point blank assassinate a guy doing dubious alchemy in front of a teenager only for said teenager to then attempt to kick his ass due to said misunderstanding— well. He’d only have two nickels to his name but honestly what was new?

Really, it was just weird that it happened twice.

Now, if he didn’t owe Constantine a favor and a lot of money, he and Nero would be somewhere far away solving a case with a lot less world ending red flags.

Rushing over the rooftops, he found himself losing the pack of demons he’d been tracking prior to stumbling across the pig guy he’d smelt the same sort of foul alchemy that had reeked from his last trip to Fortuna. It wasn’t like he could stop and let that Robin kid lock him up in a flimsy cage when he knew what sort of shit he had under his belt.

Really, Constantine wasn’t joking when he said shit from his neck of the woods was starting to bleed into nearby. Last time he checked, the weirdest thing about Gotham were their local marsupials.

Everything made sense, once upon a time. Bat themed superheroes stay in Gotham, hellish demons from another dimension in Red Grave. Now, that’s the peace and harmony Dante was talking about.

Though from the sound of screeching off in the distance at that line of grand, old manors he was pretty sure Lady told him to drive the hoards away from, it didn’t look like that status quo was staying for long. It would be one thing if Dante was the only source of Sparda blood in this cursed city for demons to go wild over. He wasn’t knew to the concept of being bait and chew toy.

As Dante leaped over another gap between buildings, he had to pause when a faint rumble faint pulse of energy almost sent him teetering into the alley below. Familiar energy split his head in two, one heading for the manor in the distance and the other in the vague direction he’d left Nero.

“What did you get yourself into this time, Nero…”

It hadn’t been in the plan to take him along.

Dante really did plan for some tame case out near Star City at the beginning of all this. But a sudden phone call from a old drinking buddy— well, frenemy? Anyway, Constantine had seemed very sober and dead serious during a phone call he’d gotten between gas stations while Nero was out.

Dante got the usual phone calls to Devil May Cry across Red Grave and beyond of the same brand of weird. Monsters appearing and disappearing, strange alchemical experiments where people messed with things they didn’t understand. Practically a regular old Tuesday in his line of business.

When he got here, he didn’t expect the mutated artificial demons that were strangely attracted to his particular brand of human-demon blood (Lady and Trish had both tested their own pure human and demon blood to confirm), leading him to find that they were in fact some forced version of human and demon features brought together by Dante didn’t even want to know what. Artificial demons made via magic ritual was one thing, most of the time Dante dealt with a majority of cases like those, a condition that could be reversed, controlled, and or beaten.

The random earthquakes spoke of something bigger and Dante had a feeling someone was doing something they shouldn’t under the city.

And with so many of the old Arkham facilities around the city being infested by regular old demons or some sort of base for artificial demons and forced human-demon hybrids, Arkham Island had seemed like the next place to check out. That is, until they’d realize the island of Lady’s childhood home was currently being kept under lock and key by the Bats and their billionaire guard dog.

Despite being condemned and forgotten, when Lady had attempted to go through getting into her family’s old properties she’d been turned her away by cops, by medical officers, by the Bats. Dante hadn’t really been paying attention to the specifics on why, becoming more and more convinced they should just raise hell and deal with what they came for damning the consequences.

If Dante could spend a month long trip off the planet, he would.

“Goddamn, Constantine.”

Nero was a good kid. He knew he’d done something good by letting Yamato hang around him like a guard dog. It wasn’t like he wasn’t skilled— young and untried definitely, but capable to put anyone who wasn’t him through the wringer. It did give him some peace of mind that it was Nero of all people who’d had some potential wielding it. If things got dicey, the kid could just throw the problem into a pocket dimension for Dante later, right?

“Hope I don’t regret this…” And Dante turned away from the direction he knew lead to Nero and refocused on the massive rows of gilded mansions drawing closer as he ran. He’d get there quicker but someone had needed a bike and he wasn’t sure with her usual habits that it wasn’t thrown across a room in pieces now.

Scaling the roof of his destination, he dropped through an already shattered skylight, crouching lightly as his feet hit shiny flooring of a large ballroom.

He weaved through the screaming crowd of people, his eyes instantly drawn to a familiar woman, albeit a bit more dressed up than usual. She’d already shed the prim persona that had scared Dante more than her with a gun ever did and was busy putting bullets into his escaped pack of demons.

“Where the hell is your shirt?” Lady shouted over the noise. Dante looked down to the charred black remains of fabric hung under his coat. He scratched at a scab on his chest, shrugging. He turned around, making to watch the hoard coming from Lady’s back as she watched his.

“Sassy teenager blew it up.” Dante threw back over his shoulder. “How’d the deal go?”

There was a small laugh followed by a symphony of bullets. Dante didn’t have to look back to know the twitching body of a blue-green monstrosity that just slid by him was her doing. “I don’t know, someone crashed in the middle of it and blew that up too.”

“Whoops.” Dante winced, brandishing Ebony and Ivory from their holsters and joining Lady’s volley.

Offering only a knowing sigh, Lady interrogated further. “So this is your idea of an easy errand?” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah… so I didn’t exactly lay low, but honestly I’m just not the errand type of guy, you know?” Dante proved his point by brandishing Rebellion from over his shoulder. In a clean swipe, he hacked away a beastly arm that had been reaching for him in one blow. Stabbing forward, he cut straight through bone and the human-demon amalgamation died with a bellowing screech.

Lady watched with a faint look of disgust on her face as Dante’s front side was now bathed in blood, clucking her tongue when he made a little futile motion to brush some sort of body part from his shoulder. “Ooooh yeah, hotshot. You’re laying low alright.”

In contrast, Lady was all mechanical elegance. A blur of white fabric and gleaming silver guns. In a few well aimed shots, she took down a demon of her own without a trace of demon guts on her person. “Though I’m pretty sure I told you to take a hike and under no circumstances to come within a mile of this place.”

Dante winced, already seeing a large influx of hybrids had begun to pour in from the ceiling, flopping messily on the ground with their mutated and mishapen limbs before getting up to find the nearest flailing human body. “Plans change. Leading the fanclub away doesn’t exactly work when you’ve already got a beacon where you don’t want it being.”

Lady sniffed, cocking her head. “I thought you said it was attracted to your blood?”

Dante spun his blade in a circle around him, taking a group that had been crowding in his peripherals out in the same motion. “I was hoping you would know more about that than me!”

Looking back, Lady had a snarky smile on her face. “Hm, I guess that’s why no one pays you for your detective skills.”

Dante stabbed Rebellion into the ground, grabbing the hybrid aimimng towards him by jagged horns instead. He pointed a free finger to Lady, in order to defend his honor. “Hey! I could totally play Magnum P.I. for your information—”

“Duck.” 

Dante barely had time to blink before the large shiny head of a RPG basically kisses his nose before it sails past his head into a crowded mass of demons behind him. Turning back, Lady is already walking away, the Kalina Ann draped over one of her arms by a strap like it was just a rather oddly shaped handbag. She barely looks at him before brandishing its bladed end at the next problem without a care in the world. 

“How the hell did you even smuggle that in here?”

“Purse.”

“I find that very hard to believe.” 

“A big purse, then.”

“Wow, thanks. I’m convinced.”

Dante kicked the corpse of a post-Kalina Ann demon aside, shuddering in sympathy. “Say, where did your himbo billionaire sponsor go?”

Lady hummed, resting her head on the side of Kalina Ann as it perched on her shoulder. “If he hasn’t been eaten by demons already? Probably running far away from this shitshow along with his approval by now.”

“I guess we’re getting in the hard way.”

“Seems like it. Especially now that you’re here, I think the Bats are gonna think we’re with these bozos.”

“A guy crashes through a skylight and kills a guy one time and suddenly he’s persona non grata forever. How is that fair?”

“You could come through a door like the rest of us mere mortals once in a while for one. Maybe less dramatics might help too.”

“Naw, gives me hives.”

BANG!

Scattering apart, Dante and Lady watched as a pitch black motorcycle rumbled through a crowd of hybrids without care. Perched on it’s back, a blonde woman was followed by a storm of electricity that arced from a scythe-like single handed sword. Embedded down its side were ridges mimicking the grooves of a set of ribs, and large red stone reminiscent of an eye.

As she came to a stop, she pulled a set of sunglasses from her eyes to pushed her hair back like a headband. “Glad you joined the party, Dante. Our friend has some interesting gadgets in his basement.”

Lady waved, excitedly jogging over to smooth her hand over the leather seats. “Did some window shopping?”

Trish winked back. “You know it.”

Dante sputtered. “What the hell happened to my bike then?”

Trish pursed her lips, lounging over the new bike’s dashboard. After a moment of thought, she patted the it’s front where a bat in flight was emblazoned across it. “Upgraded.”

Dante took that as definite confirmation that his bike was somewhere deep below their feet in pieces after a fiery explosion.

Ignoring Dante’s silent mourning, Trish pulled a vial of dark red liquid from her pocket, throwing at him like someone would a dog and treat. “I got past the biometrics. Apparently they had a blood sample from you somehow.”

Holding the small vial up to his eyes, Dante frowned. “That explains it. Though I can’t recall willingly coming to Gotham recently.”

Lady scoffed, crossing her legs from where she sat on the back of the stolen bike. “No one comes to Gotham willingly.”

Dante wondered if that was a dig at him. After all, Lady had been completely against returning to the city her condemned childhood home laid in. Honestly, if anyone had pulled him onto a case back in his hometown he’d be livid too. At times, just working out of Red Grave felt like digging up a grave or two still.

“That’s not all. I think I found the reason Mr. Wayne seems against selling you the Manor property back.” Trish smiled, throwing a curl of blonde hair over her shoulder. “The public was right about the man funding the city’s heroes. Interesting that while wearing his face, the computer in his rather high tech basement told me ‘welcome back, Batman’.”

Dante laughed, finally getting a bit of fun pulled from this case. “No kidding.”

Of course, that was ruined near instantly when a figure stalked out of a hallway on the second floor that people had been escaping through. It stood over the banister of the large open building, staring down at them with glowing green eyes. At once, it rose, leaping from the railing to hover above the dance floor.

The figure’s silhouette blotted out the light of the moon behind it, long feathered dragon-like wings protruding from it’s back in a mockery of angelic holiness. Funnily enough, the form reminded Dante strangely of his own Devil Form.

In one hand, it held a mace almost the same size as Dante. Landing hard enough on the ground to cause a crater, the angel brandished it’s weapon straight at him. He tried hard not to think about the last time he’d fought an Angelo.

Lady immediately pulled away from his side, patting him on the shoulder in mock support. “I guess the brains behind all of this finally got somewhere. Good luck!”

“And our timeline just moved up so Lady and I will be clearing the remaining hybrids found roaming the streets. I’m sure you’ll find a way to let us know which Arkham facility to make our way to.”

“I thought we weren't doing that because of the Bats!”

Lady and Trish exchanged glances, looking up to the avenging angel above them. “I have a feeling they’ll be a bit busy with other things instead.”

Lady wound an arm around Trish’s waist, giving Dante a little mock salute before aiming the Kalina Ann at a wall. With exaggerated fanfare, Trish revved her new ride towards the reinforced brick before Lady fired a blast and they shot through smoke and flames, wheels sliding outside on the neat driveway sideways with a shrill squeal. The momentum marked it with a long trailing skidmark before they sped off towards the city.

Dante rolled his eyes and turned back to the impromptu job he’d been given. “Those slackers are always sticking me with the hard jobs.”

“I’m guessing you’re Rosso Angelo, then? I heard you were looking for me.” Smiling, Dante unsheathed his sword. Rebellion was hungry in his hands itching for a fight Dante was as well.

He began to walk forward, planning to meet the obvious challenge in the angel’s posture only to for the artificial demon to snap its head back up to where he’d burst in through the skylight. The moon was high and further from the dense city heart, some stars glittered above as well.

“Admiring the view?”

Dante quickly found out that the angel was in fact, not stargazing when it began to flap it’s wings once more, rising to the heavens as if answering a trumpet call. “Hey! We’re not done here!”

Sheathing Rebellion over his back and mourning what should’ve been a true steam blowing fight, he began to scale the room, crouching low before leaping to the second floor and up the platformed walls.

“Trish blew up my bike, man, slow down!”

---

When the newly dubbed Rosso Angelo began to flap its wings once more, before it could get away, Bruce had aimed a tracking gun reinforced with a material that would have cut through steal. When it had slipped off, he’d cursed and readjusted to slip a different tracker onto the white haired man— Dante, that Lady Arkham had called him— nearby instead.

It took Bruce every ounce of discipline in his body to not drag the man to the cave instead and interrogate him on where Jason was but with the large creature tearing out of the ballroom and into Gotham proper, he knew he couldn’t do that. To catch a hunter, you needed to get it while catching its prey.

“Alfred?”

“It seems the man’s tracker has stopped below ground level beneath Arkham Island. “ Alfred point to a glowing red dot that symbolized his location pinging. He finger then trailed a little ways down it’s intended path way before settling on an orange and green dot blinking softly next to each other. “I also do believe these are Masters Tim and Damian who’ve just arrive to the area.”

In his head, he began to push away Bruce, the father, knowing as much as he wanted to, he did not have the power to help them. By the time he’d slipped into his suit, Alfred already had the Batmobile hot and running, her dents and damage from the previous night of work vanished and replaced by sleek dark gloss.

The voice in his ears spoke his mission before he could. “Bring them home safely, sir.”

Batman silently nodded into the interior of the Batmobile as it sped off. He would certainly try.

Chapter 4: the devil is in the details

Notes:

I'm so sorry, I didn't realize what a behemoth this part is and I feel like it couldn't be divided. MY CONDOLENCES LOL

The plan was simple— locate the trafficking ring Drake had obsessively tracked for the last weeks, return its kidnapped victims to their lives, and rid himself of this ridiculous infantile ‘grounding’ he’d been subject to ever since Todd disappeared and imploded his life quite spectacularly.

Despite being the origin story for Superman of all people, Smallville had been utterly mind melting apart from the animals the Kents kept on their property. There was only so much time could spend holed up in a barn before his brain starting atrophying and his body started to get restless.

Leaving the premises of Kent Farm had been ridiculously easy as Jon’s father had seemed recently more concerned with persons entering the grounds than leaving. By the time they probably realized him gone, Jon had dropped Damian off miles away under the impression that his father had called him back to Gotham for an emergency.

It hadn’t been hard to convince the boy when Damian had quickly found himself dealing with the chaos Crime Alley had descended into ever since Todd’s disappearance. The sudden earthquake and appearance of similar demons to the ones Nero and he had taken down that night had convinced Jon pretty easily.

Though, if he were someone softhearted like Jon, he might’ve felt a twinge of guilt misleading the boy but his father obviously needed all the help he could get. If the Batman was stubborn, Robin could outdo him easily.

Batman needs a Robin. The mantra all his predecessors had spoken at some point or another had pushed him forward, especially knowing his father most likely only had Drake of all people if he already hadn’t sent him running.

By the time Damian erased these criminals from Gotham, Father would be able to say nothing as Damian returned home reveling in the satisfaction of having Drake’s case cracked wide open at his feet.

Though, if Damian were being honest, he hadn’t accounted for said case to involve demons and a pale haired swordsman around the age of Drake.

“I cannot believe these imbeciles fell for such a simple ploy. Don’t they verify their coworker’s identities?”

“Most of these guys are criminals hiding something, so really, you’d stand out getting someone to take their mask off.” Nero turned backwards, cartoonish devil Halloween mask still on as they walked. Damian stood dutifully in front of him as the began their walk further into the building, passing by others in similar garb. As they walked, he resisted the urge to pull at the loose rope restraints around his wrists.

Nero leaned a bit forward, whispering. “Bet I could be a spy if I wanted to.”

Damian huffed. “I highly doubt that.”

At the gate to Scarecrow’s choice of haunt, the place had looked like any other villain's warehouse. Damian recalled the place being condemned for a while, the original building a supplies facility to the Arkham family’s business, the Asylum they ran before shutting down after their patriarch passed. It was an open secret to the reason why— most of the family members had either been involved in perpetuating the dubious psychiatry happening in Arkham Asylum before it’s requisition by his father’s company, or at the mercy of it.

Now, as a Ace Chemical’s office building, the more Damian observed the surroundings he was beginning to realize that it had probably been a front for a while now.

Sure, there were makeshift cubicles and office supply boxes full of scientific instruments about in the main entrance, but that’s where the resemblance ended.

The back entrance led to a similar layout only this area was full of masked people in devil masks, pallets of vials filled with the green-blue substance that had seemingly powered the changes of the creatures he’d seen run rampant through the Alley as of late.

Before he and Nero could try to slip away unnoticed under the guise of escorting Robin to be contained somewhere, a distant rumble began shaking the floor beneath him. At first, Damian thought maybe Nero had stumbled into him again. Then, after he barely avoided stepping directly into a newly formed pothole of bubbling liquid, a new sort of horrible feeling went down his back and he wondered if there had been something he missed at every other instance of the recent freak earthquakes happening in Gotham.

And then a hand did bump into him in an attempt to drag him away from the growing fissure.

Someone behind them at one of the desks ran over, looking panicked before banging on a wall divider nearby. “Shit. Joey! We got another one.”

The person scurried off before they could be acknowledged. From another makeshift office, a man popped his head around the cubicle to look at the puddle sized hole of neon water Damian had almost fallen into.

From the pit’s depths bubbled a toxic green sludge that seem to bend to a tide only it knew. His gut feeling from the store watching the creatures ooze with a similar substance was vindicated. Knowing what usually followed when Lazarus Pits were involved left a sick feeling in Damian’s stomach he knew wasn’t just from the smell of toxic filth.

“Lazarus Pits?”

Damian startled, belatedly realizing he’d spoken aloud. Whispering out of the corner of his mouth before the man made his way over to them, Nero leaned closer under the guise of securing his binds. “A supernatural phenomenon. Essentially a substance with the ability to heal all wounds, extend human lifespan, potentially bring the dead back to life...”

“Ah, real fountain of youth type of thing then. Sounds kinda nice once you get past how it looks and smells like run off from hell.”

Nero looked curious for a second before Damian corrected the already forming ideas in his eyes. “It can also cause insanity and increased aggression.”

The boy behind him wilted, pulling the both of them away before Damian could get annoyed by his touchiness. “Alright, so less nice. Got it, do not touch.”

“They’re doing something here… Lazarus Pits are a foul, rare phenomena, not sinkholes that pop up every time a earthquake occurs…”

Before Damian could continue on, the voice that had been called to contain the new Pit that had sprung forth stood before them, a wide piece of sheet metal under one arm. The man haphazardly placed the sheet as a temporary walkway before herding them behind the open walls of his makeshift office.

…Joey, was it?

“You’re gonna have to wait here, man. Sorry to blow your whole capturing Robin moment but Boss is in the Hole right now.” Joey sat back in an office chair yawning, and lazily flipping through the clipboard he had on hand.

“Right… the Hole.” Nero confirmed, obviously not knowing anything. Damian looked towards the metallic grooves of the high ceiling warehouse and took a deep breath. “Should I bring the prisoner to the Hole, er, Joey?”

“Your funeral. Pretty sure one of the freaky experiments got loose. Think it ate someone, I don’t know. Maybe Larry? Haven’t seen him in a bit.” Joey turned their back to them, flipping through a clip board, his eyes narrowed and then pull the reading further from his face like he needed glasses.

“Nah, Larry’s just a little… tied up at the moment.” Nero mumbled only loud enough for Damian to catch, running a hand through his hair. Damian could hear the humor he was attempting to keep out of his voice edging forward and gave him a kick.

“Ow!” Joey turned back around at the sound and Nero hastily righted himself. “I mean, wow! Is that so? I thought I just saw Larry earlier somewhere…”

“Say, Dave, are you sure you’ve been getting enough sleep? Don’t see you here on the shift list for a double. I mean, I know the big boss pays good but we’re both pushing fifty and I swear you got more white hairs than from when I last saw you, no offense…”

Damian could no longer take Nero’s attempts at spy work. Refusing to address his own short fuse, he launched headfirst into cutting in.

“Tch, just knock him out and let’s get going!”

“Not so loud!” Nero staged whispered.

Joey immediately zoned in on Robin’s hands which were loose enough to berate and nudge the person next to him. He sighed, placing his clipboard down like he was already preparing to kiss the concrete in his head. “You’re not Dave.”

“Nope. Sorry, man.”

Before the guy could make a big fuss, Nero’s fist shot out and knocked out the man as quietly as he could. Going limp, he dived beneath him before he could hit the ground and began to prop him up in the office chair. In order to give the impression of a nap on the job, Nero slipped the devil mask he had on over the guy’s face.

Damian took this time to pipe up while he began ushering Nero towards the tunnel hole before anyone caught wind of them. “Now that all that drivel’s over, get me out of these ridiculous restraints.”

“Hey, I spent a lot of time on these knots.”

“And yet, your shoes are untied.”

“It’s called style.”

“It’s called I-don’t-know-how-to-tie-a-knot.”

“You’re just mad you have to lace those green monstrosity of knee highs up everyday— hey, slow down!”

As soon as he was free, Damian ignored Nero’s voice trailing off as he pushed onward into the tunnel mouth in his very stylish knee high green boots, thank you very much.

---

For such a sinister operation, Tim expected a bit more than a couple of guys with devil Halloween masks in front of an ominous Hole leading to underground tunnels.

When he’d found himself getting deeper and deeper underground with no end in sight was when he started to attempt to appear not creeped out by all of it.

He knew Gotham had a reputation of being cursed— and a lot of people put that on the rumored underground city it had been built on. Tim wondered as he passed old catacombs and mine shafts what sort of history was buried beneath Gotham.

Tim snickered to himself, and thought about the particular urban legend that they had perpetuated out that Batman was actually the mythic demon bat god said to lived deep beneath Gotham. Portals to hell, a gothic city with a bloody history… the propaganda basically wrote itself.

Though the deeper he got, the more Tim’s dread was solidified by a sour and absolutely rank smell coming from the depths of the tunnels. Tim would’ve genuinely believed if someone told him was a portal to hell.

And by now, Tim had already accepted that if it looked like a trap, a sounded like a trap… well, he was in too deep to find so little that it didn’t justify returning empty handed.

Besides, he was not looking forward to Bruce’s grumbling over hanging up on him when he got back.

After he’d cooled off from his drive to the Ace Chemical Processing Plant Scarecrow was using as a base on Arkham Island, Tim had pushed through the firewalls set by Bruce, it was easy knowing that the man had eventually listened to him and opened the email Tim had sent to him on what he’d found with Pyg in Crime Alley.

Bruce had to be becoming pretty lax in his old age (or maybe just stressed with what Tim had eventually found in his hardrives) because he didn’t even notice the Trojan horse that had been attached to the message. Getting into his personal files had been thrilling, especially with Oracle out for the week and not around to catch him and slap his wrist. It became less fun when he’d pulled up the video file of the same white haired man that he had just met be the last person to see Jason.

Watching the damning proof of Bruce’s recent behavior had cemented Tim’s resolve.

If he had to go Robin hunting in a dark, dank tunnel so be it. He’d make Jason’s life a living hell when he figured how this was all connecting back to his disappearance. Patrolling during the recent crime surge in Crime Alley had been like being on ten patrols in one night.

Distracted by his line of thinking, Tim yelped again as he was forced to jump last second over a squirming, fleshy mass below.

And as if regular creepy tunnel business wasn’t bad enough— some of the tunnels were damp, eerie spaces lined with branches and roots of a seemingly bioluminescent plant. He’d made the mistake of touching one of them to take samples but was put off immediately when the roots began to move.

Now, he had dealt with Ivy on almost a biweekly basis at this point. Weirdly sentient plants that moved and had a mind of its own were not new concepts.

But something about the way they glowed a familiar blue-green when he’d poked them, a glowing ripple effect trailing down deeper into the tunnels to where Tim assumed something older and much, much bigger grew.

Most people would turn around, call Batman to give him the recon and call it a day.

Tim, on the other hand, found himself in a abandoned lab somewhere deep beneath what he assumed must’ve been the Gotham River or between Burnley and Bristol.

Hearing a couple of low voice up ahead, Tim forced himself to carefully avoid the hopefully not sentient plants and tuck himself into a rocky overhang in the tunnel wall. Watching silently as a handful of Scarecrow goons walked past, Tim crouched low and waited a few feet ahead before beginning to stalk in their footsteps.

It wasn’t long before the scent of undeveloped wet earth gave way to a sharp clinical smell of alcohol and other chemicals. Tim could hear a bustle of machinery and more voices in front of the small group to what he assumed was probably the real base beneath the front on the surface. Hearing more traffic than he thought he’d be able to get past without proper recon, he made a split second decision.

Tim turned on his infrared in his domino before he decided to break off from the goons to slip into a cool , empty ante chamber nearby. The minute he slipped into the room, he noticed it was extremely quiet. The sound of voices faded away, the further he walked down the hallway.

At it’s end, an old door stood. When Tim tried to push it open, it remained still, jammed. Trying the handle, he realize it was locked and before he pulled out a case of lock picks, he rechecked the infrared to confirm nothing was waiting on it’s other side. He made quick work of the lock, swiftly ducking through the threshold before he was caught snooping.

The area he seemed to be in now were faintly reminiscent to a hospital layup. White walls, the smooth glossy flooring. There were a myriad of various rooms with windows. Some of them were completely devoid of everything save hospital beds and the like, others seem to have items still in them.

Most of those were eerie places, instruments and equipment scattered across the ground and tipped over like its occupants had left in a hurry. The worst being rooms that were devoid of beds or desks, simply housing empty metal cages large enough to fit multiple humans in.

Forcing himself to look away, Tim stared down the hallway where a large, cursive A logo was emblazoned on the far wall, now molded and decrepit with water and age.

Was this some sort of medical facility? An abandoned laboratory? Tim began to wonder what kind of money someone needed to have in order to build such an expensive facility so far from civilizations and deep under undeveloped layers of dirt and old Gotham archeological sits.

Judging from the A logo and the fact this so called Ace Chemicals facility was built on the essentially abandoned Arkham Island of all places, he assumed it was one of the older abandoned asylum sites rather than an anachronistic Ace site. The place practically screamed of dubious health practices and Tim did not want to stay longer than he needed unless he was hoping to see some real spirits of a more supernatural sort.

Pulling a small pin from his belt, he attached one end with thin, barely visible nylon and add another pin to string up a tripwire in the doorway. He’d set an automated warning system to notify him if anyone tripped it following Tim down the passageway.

Trailing further into this wing, Tim got to the end of the hallway where the door was boarded off and chained with heavy duty locks. Instead, he abandoned his journey further in and passed on looking through the more trashed rooms, opting for a smaller office in the beginning of the the long line of rooms.

In contrast to the other rooms where it was obvious everything had been picked clean or meticulously destroyed, this room housed rows upon rows of file cabinet space and neat rows of desks. Probably an office room rather than a medical one.

Looking on what might’ve been a receptionist's table or a doctor’s desk, an open file stood untouched. Seeing as no one had been down this way for a while, he gingerly lifted it, Tim glossed over what he could and read the contents of what looked to be a memo.

---

The Current trials with compound LZ–V, progenitor Subject V0, show increasing signs of efficacy while administered in conjunction with Lazarus exposed individuals.

Base humans infused with demonic essence that go on to demonic transformation ritual (see attached reference document from Dr. Agnus, Fortuna) experience a <40% chance survival rate. The subjects that did survive initial trials displayed unstable signs of mutation (see attached Progress Notes). Onset cognitive and physical deterioration resulted in expiration within 48 hours.

Further research showed that in contrast, demons exposed to Lazarus waters, exhibited faster regeneration rates however, this came with side effects observed as increased aggression and decreased cognitive abilities.

Dissection of post-mortem subjects found to have higher rate of malignant cells and limited lifespan with continued exposure to regeneration attempts. Closer study also revealed aggressive neurological rewiring in correlation to continuous Lazarus exposure. Rage syndrome could not be rewritten via recalibration and subjects are due for termination.

The current working hypothesis is that Lazarus exposed humans present the current viable option for stable, long-term usage of compound LZ – V without major side effects. Preliminary trials with subject J-357 cells seem to adapt quickly to the compound's profile. It is of my current professional opinion that I recommend going forward with phase two of trials.

Finally feeling like he was finding relevant information pertaining to his original case at hand, he looked around to see if he could find anything off the other desks nearby coming to the realization that there was no a single electronic device in any of the rooms he had just been in. The memo had mentioned two reference documents but other than the paper left on the desk, there was nothing other that office supplies.

Dragging his feet in a funeral march to the cabinets that lined the wall he hoped he’d find a USB or some sort of hard drive—

“Please don’t be more paper documents, please don’t be—”

Tim pushed the metal catch on the cabinet and out rolled the innards of the drawer filled to the brim with manila folders. He despaired even more when he realized a bunch of them no labels on their tabs either.

“The first personal computers were invented back in the 80s guys, c’mon…” Tim cursed the thorough rows of filing, knowing that the dated system was probably more indicative of the illegal activities that had probably happened here prior to their dissolution of the Arkham facilities than true antiquated adherence.

He got through maybe half a drawers worth of folder before his eyes latched on to the subject that had been mentioned in the memo like a shark to blood. “J-357…”

Patient Report: REDACTED

Patient #: J-357

STUDY: ADULT MALE, HUMAN BASE, LAZARUS EXPOSURE → INTRODUCED TO LZ-V

Subject has been previously exposed to the substance known colloquially as the ‘Lazarus Pits’. Due to its current nature, the subject has proved to be able to handle demonic transformations more successfully than previous full human base subjects introduced to demonic essence and full demon base subjects under Lazarus experimentation.

Early subjects mainly respond to fear factors such as prey’s increased heart rate, sweat production, spikes in heat, etc. in contrast to the current model which has also proved able to adjust to orders and commands in human speech. This greater cognitive ability comes with it’s detriments however as the occasional outbursts of disobedience does occur.

Recalibration attempts effective via per 24hr dosage of LZ-V.

Tim shut the file closed, soaking in the new information.

Demons. Is that what he had seen back at Pyg’s warehouse? At first, Tim had thought Pyg and Scarecrow had gotten their hands on an alien species he’d never heard of, maybe even some sort of meta ability or a shared transformation with how many bodies he’d seen of them.

Furthermore, a Lazarus exposed human… with a successful transformation? If Tim had only seen what the culprit, Pyg, Scarecrow, or whoever it was deemed as ‘failed’ and left for dead, he didn't want to come across the desired results of all these attempts.

The substance, this LZ-V, was obviously volatile. Tim saw an obvious pattern in multiple studies in which scientists had been instructed to assemble human-demon hybrids and start them on an extended course of the substance. The degeneration always seemed to start suddenly and without mercy. The later dissection to find what went wrong was written all over what had happened with Pyg in Crime Alley.

He began thinking back to early that night how the creature in Pyg’s base had behaved. Now knowing what he knew, even if it had lived from its drop from that height— it probably would not have survived the night.

Tim flipped back through the files further, finding one of the more introductory phases to see if he could find more information on exactly this LZ-V substance was and what it could do to humans and what the documents kept referring to as ‘demons’.

His fingers caught on an older document that felt out of place in the rest of the papers kept in this folder. Looking over the smaller cut of paper and handwriting instead of text, he assumed it might be a reference document the current trials were based on slipped in between the studies. There was no sign of a recipient and the slanted almost fevered scrawl made it’s contents hard to read.

I have made my conclusions on the sample drug LZ-E. The current version was based on genomes extracted from Empusa species variant. The sample prove larger than average, an adult female, perhaps. This rare specimen was found through Lesser Gate usage, corroborating the legend of the glorious Hell Tree that it is said to serve resides in the depths. Although it is assumed to feed on human blood, I believe another supernatural source may be able to water it just as well.

Utilizing the previous works of John Arkham, I believe one may be able to utilize demonic energy of Devil Arms to open an artificial Hell Gate through the combination of both magical, alchemical means and science of mankind. This is obvious made from my earlier work trials in which the subject is granted angelic ability as I mentioned in my previous correspondence.

The Order has lent me the means to continue my experiments but such grand results take time, and my genius cannot be rushed. I feel as though eventually my services will no longer be recognized.

I hope to endear you to my services and have sent spawn of the object of my experiments. It’s sire responded positively to initial trials. However, this generation inherited the previous’ faults such as the degeneration of exoskeleton and it’s lack of response to light and sound. I will attempt to decrease dosage of next sample trial.

Agnus

Residing Head Alchemist of the Order of the Sword, Fortuna

Fortuna… Thinking back to his file snooping, hadn’t the case Bruce had started to assemble on that Dante character mention a recent incident on the island?

Tim sighed, the exhaustion from being out longer than he originally had planned for patrol. Without much context for the more magical side of all this, Tim hated the way he felt as though he was floundering through most of the documents here. Despite obviously utilizing some sort of dubious science along the way, a bulk was inspired by arcane alchemy Tim had no knowledge of.

After all, what the hell was an Empusa? It was obviously another type of ‘demon’ but it didn’t sound like anything he’d seen so far. Was it related in some way to the praying mantids genus Empusa? Or of the mythological Greek variety? 

And who the hell was John Arkham? From recent Gotham history, the only Arkham that Tim knew of was Amadeus, the man who had originally established the Arkham Asylum. The man died a miserable death with the rest of his family who either went on to twist the original goals of the institution or would become members of it’s halls.

Tim had a feeling the malpractice case that had eventually burned the Arkham family to the ground had truly missed the utter scale of evil acts that happened behind closed doors. Tim had a feeling that at it’s prime, the influx of patients to Arkham Asylum had been a quiet gold mine for the scientists here. Tim had seen his share of trafficking cases in Gotham, but this was something completely out of that ballpark.

“What the hell is going on here…” Tim groaned mussing up his hair in frustration.

After rummaging through, you guessed it, more paper documents, Tim wondered what the hell the Arkhams, Pyg and Scarecrow had to do with the sudden large influx of demons rising in Gotham. Human experimentation, chemical trials— that was no surprise. A new avenue in which to enhance the human fear factor, it was something Tim could see Scarecrow and Pyg in all too well.

But the scale of it all.

In his gut, he knew Pyg and Scarecrow were people of habit and wouldn't have broken though the norm unless it was due to the outside influence of a stronger personality. If Tim was right, there was a good chance the recipient of the letter could be—

“Shit!” Tim dropped the stack of papers he’d been feverishly flipping through. The soft flesh between the meat of his thumb and pointer finger sliced thinly open on the edge of the paper, fresh blood beading from the wound. See, now this was why Tim hated paper documents.

This would never had happened if whoever this so called scientific breakthrough genius could be bother to keep up with the times and conduct their dubious science via computer—

Creaaaaaaak .

All of the blood in Tim’s face dropped suddenly to his feet. A chittering sound echoed through the room, not having come from the outside door that was still blocked off, or the other door he had trip wired, but somehow and most definitely in the same room as him.

Turning around slowly, Tim made eye contact with a series of long, insect-like legs that crawled slowly from the darkness. As it dragged the rest of his body into the light, Tim sighed. “Ah. So that's what those large intimidating cages were for.”

The Empusa, Tim assumed staggered forward, using it’s raptor like claws characteristic of a praying mantis to clean its face. It faced him straight on, ambling forward awkward and slow as a dim glow that pulsed from veins scarred up and down it’s body. A low whine clicked from it’s face that unfolded outwards like a flower to reveal wide rows of teeth. Red spinal structures lined it’s body like barnacles, seeping a rather familiar sludge of toxic green onto the ground where it burnt through where it touched.

Tim backed up slow and steady, getting ready to bolt if he had to. “Nice buggy. Now, look I promised Batman I'd only do recon of this super creepy basement hive thing going on here. Being eaten Alien style and forced to escape out of your chest cavity later would suck for both of us. Is there any chance you understand the human language and would be down for a truce…?”

Seeming to not really register Tim’s speech, he began putting his bloodied hand behind him to grasp his folded up bo when a truly unholy screech chattering from the creatures mandibles and it surged forward aiming for his hand. Tim had to force himself not to fold in on himself until he popped out of existence. 

“Shittttt!” And he barely managed to slip under a swipe of raptor like claws wildly cutting above his head.

Tim barely made his way around the corner, one hand rummaging through his belt pockets only to pull out a canister of aerosol spray none of them had ever found a use for, what was it again...

“Okay, Red Robin. Note to Batman: bug spray is way more important that shark spray— fuck!”

Another swoosh of air to his side displaced the air enough to make his hair flutter. Realizing that he had barely been missed, he quickly began to observe the creature before him to make a plan of attack. What he wouldn’t give to have a conversation with his younger self now…

Now, at the time, seven year old Tim had actually hated bugs. Anytime he found the rare one crawling about the mansion while his parents were away, he toss a big bowl over it, stack a book or two on top of that and cry until Mrs. Mac came around with groceries.

He’d actually been neck deep in a dinosaur phase at that age to be completely honest but he was just stoked that he was getting any sort of keepsake from his parent’s travels.

…Even if that was a dense study on insects from around the world.

His mom seemed absolutely tickled to ramble about her latest travels in a jungle somewhere in the South Americas when prompted and it was one of those rare instances Tim reveled in being more alike than he'd thought he was to them. 

Time to remember all that junk, Tim!

Larger raptorial claws meant it probably had poor maneuverability. Not that it matter with them being in a empty narrow hallway that didn’t exactly have many obstacles he could try scaling to slow it down. Unless he wanted to take his chances towards the main room he’d seen those group of goons walk towards. Either that or be in a dead end or outside with what was probably dozens of Scarecrow lackeys swarmed him.

Then maybe… praying mantis exoskeletons weren’t known for their durability, right?

Tim took another look just as the Empusa began charging, missing Tim wildly and ramming into a wall. Instead of slumping over after going through enough concrete Tim was sure would knock out an elephant, it stood back up on shaky legs to reorient itself.

Right so that did absolutely nothing at all and if it survived a wall, it could survive Tim’s staff.

It recovered remarkably quick, shooting forward like a rampaging bull where Tim and the dead end were about to become very, very close and familiar. He attempted to try one of the doors in the hallway, each of them coming out locked before he basically fell through one with a loose hinge.

The Empusa shot past him less than a second after he’d fell through the door. Tim scrambled up from the floor to prepare himself for when it came through the doors pf the room it just saw Tim trap himself in… only it kept going?

Tim watched through the window of the room into the hall where the Empusa stood up on it’s hind legs, sniffing the air like a dog with it’s paws up. Pushing up too high, Tim could see where bits of plaster rained down as it bumped it’s head into the ceiling before cowering like something had hit it instead of it having simply brushed against an object of it’s environment. Chittering lowly, it use it’s raptor claws to pick and scratch at it’s face where plaster stuck into it’s maw of Lazarus green drool and teeth.

What did that paper say? It no longer responded to light and sound… Tim took a chance and inhaled deeply before waving his arms and yelling. Nothing. He looked down at the hand that had it had tried to chomp off in the beginning, a small thing no longer bleeding.

If Tim couldn’t throw an explosive at the thing from his comfy distance away…

Carefully ducking beneath it, the creature tilted its head tilting back and forth as if it were trying to hear and see something it couldn’t anymore. His sympathy stopped there though as it didn’t stop Tim from pushing up on it’s torso using the leverage to kick forward, meaning to bend the Empusa’s femur as he pushed down and up on its trochanter in the opposite direction of its natural motion.

It's basically like cracking crab legs, Tim. Everything about this is so normal, man, no sweat!

CRACK!

The chilling revulsion that came with the sound of the creature’s pain made Tim recoil. The limb flopped loosely at it’s side and buckled. Tim probably would’ve gagged and thrown up if he didn’t know it would probably find him by smelling that. Before it could crushed him beneath, Tim slipped free, readying a canister of explosive gel in one hand.

If it could survive knocking into walls, then Tim would just have to hit it with something that was used to tear walls down.

While it knelt closer to the ground, Tim readied what Dick would’ve probably mourned as improper stance and launched himself up the back of the Empusa like a horse vault. At the top of it’s neck, it's head turned backwards in 180° (holy mother of Batman, Tim forgot praying mantises could do that) before it began to snap its rows of piranha teeth at him. Before it's jaws could close around him, Tim shoved the explosive down it’s gullet and did a back handspring off it as it bucked. Upside down at his pinnacle, Tim could see it attempt to gag and throw up the large metal canister but Tim was quick.

When he slid across the glossed floors in a crouch, he flipped the automated switch off with his gauntlet and the armored plate of exoskeleton on the Empusa’s chest burst outwards before a splatter of gore landed inches away from his steel toed boots.

“Oh wow, is that Lazarus water?”

Some part of Tim’s brain wondered if he could be quick enough for a sample— there had to be some weird properties those studies he read didn’t mention about Lazarus infused demons.

As if realizing Tim had defeated it, the Empusa turned towards him to hiss and make a horrible hairball sort of gagging noise. During its last hurrah, Tim had the forethought to tuck and roll just as a glob of green mucus splattered where his head would’ve been.

Within second, a layer of metal, concrete and earth was corroded away and fumes of acidic green waste curled in the air where a soupy Red Robin special might’ve been. 

“Oh.” Yeah, so Tim would’ve died if he took that sample. Boy, was he glad no one was around to see that attempt. Time to pretend like nothing happened—

“Didn’t you hear that, imbecile?" So not only was the universe was being extra petty today if that was who Tim thought it was.

“That better not be you Robin…” Tim grumbled as he covered his hand haphazardly, tightly wrapping gauze around the paper cut on his hand. He had no clue how keen demon’s sense of smell was but it obviously was better than what he thought if had followed him down several yards of hall with just the tiniest bead of blood from his hand. Better to not test fate if there was another escaped experiment roaming these abandoned halls.

Reaching the door he'd wired off, he haphazardly leapt over the silver line and then nearly crashed into Damian who was supposed to be hundred of miles away in Kansas. Though, knowing him, the kid probably had goaded poor Jon into another one of his schemes. And from his experience as a previous rebel Robin— Superman was not infallible.

Before Tim could start reassessing his previous plan to cover more of the base now that Robin was here, from the dim glow of the tunnels a boy with white hair around his age stood behind Damian’s back, with a blade drawn.

Before he could really think about it, the image of Damian with his back turned to a boy that was a carbon copy of the man he just fought sent his bo swinging open and out. Damian moved on instinct, probably assuming something was behind him and Tim’s staff made contact in an instant.

Like the assassin, the boy caught the end of his bo but Tim had learned his lesson from last time. Twisting another chamber of his bo, instead of ineffective electricity or a blast that wouldn’t do much other than burn his clothes, Tim focused less on attempting to fight and subdue but rather going straight to capture.

A reinforced netting shot from the bo’s point of contact and wrapped around the boy, sending him to the ground with a yelp.

Before Tim could get the paralytic he’d set in the barbs woven into the net released, Damian surged forward, attempting to bat his staff from his hands with his own sword.

“You idiot, the demon is behind you, not me!”

…Behind him? Just then, the alarm he'd set for the door went off on his gauntlet.

Looking back, Tim saw where the door he had stepped through while shot full of adrenaline hadn't shut behind him. A familiar twisted face poke it’s head through the threshold, sniffing at the air before stilling as it’s head aimed for them.

So the universe had sent him another Empusa. Joy.

The new Empusa also seemed to have friends. At it’s back, similar looking demons tumbled over themselves to get through the person sized door. They struggled hissing and snarling at the others, snapping and drawing viscous green blood that burnt the ground below them.

His only consolation was that compared to the loner from before that towered in the hallways, scraping the ceiling and running into walls as it walked, the group before him seemed half of Tim’s own height. Their skin shown a dark, bruise colored texture, foregoing the plates of exoskeleton Ti had seen from its predecessors.

Tim looked down, scanning the boy who was busy pulling himself out of the netting of metal wire. Across one of his cheeks, Tim saw where the impact must have nailed him across the face, the area now steadily dripping with blood.

“Damn it, those things are attracted to blood!” Cursing, Tim knelt to the ground and began pulling in the boys face forward to dump clotting powder over where the cut dripped steadily .

"What the hell, man!” The boy sputtered, a plume of powder coming from his mouth where Tim’s aim had been shaky.

Damian seemed to become even more antagonistic at that. “Right, and that’s why you shot someone you haven’t even met point blank with a capture net. Your genius truly astounds me at times—”

Tim was close to letting the demons have them if it meant he got to strangle the brat. “Shut up and let me think!”

Okay, it was sounding like he should just toss everything he thinks he knows into a pile to set on fire because why was it that it could stand bombs and what the fuck even was this thing—

Tim paused looking back down to the shark repellent he had stashed in his belt in lieu for the now gone can of explosive gel. Sure, he probably couldn’t lob another bomb down it’s throat with Damian and the mini Dante nearby but a lighter and an aerosol should be fine right?

Clicking the spark wheel of his lighter, Tim gave his can a little shake and prayed to Holy Batman that this worked. When the plume of fire spit from his makeshift flamethrower, Tim was certain from the shrieks that he’d just caught himself demon bacon.

“Demon flambé, not bad!” The boy crowed from where he’d stumbled out of his binds. Tim would’ve laughed at his too excited tone if he were not obviously somehow related to Dante and a basically still an unknown.

Tim expertly did not tense when the boy readjusted his grip on his blade as the flaming Empusa came flooding into the room in a wave of hellish screaming and gnashing teeth baying for blood. Flicking his bo open, Damian at his side with his katana drawn, they became a blur of movement.

Spinning his bo far left, Damian met him in tandem as teeth snapping came from his right. It wasn’t the hardest fight they’d ever been a part of, these Empusa seemed to mindlessly attack based on where movement was coming from and Tim had gotten real good at softball after Steph had dragged him and Jason out to practice every so often.

With a resounding wack to one Empusa sent another coming his way, Tim sighed, looking across the room where the boy was a blur of blue magic tendrils shaped like a hand coalescing into a physical form that took Empusa out flying in swarms.

“Is it just me, or is that guy really enjoying this?”

Damian looked over as well, seemingly impressed with the sword work that was interspersed between.

“Who’s your new friend anyway?”

“He’s not a friend. We are temporary allies for the time being. Once we vanquish these demons from Gotham, he will return to his demon hunting business in Red Grave.”

Tim internalized that, the preliminary file Bruce had mentioned Dante’s business profiting around some sort of demon vanquishing medium service. He didn’t realize that included sending a teenager to hack and slash them to pieces with a sword.

“He told you he works there? This…”

“Nero.” Bruce hadn’t mentioned any kid following Dante into Gotham. Even though he wanted to say he could just be a ignorant bystander to all of this, he’d rather be safe than sorry. If he told Damian who was obviously more invested than he was trying to come off as…

Damian’s voice dragged him back from his thoughts. “And yes, he said he’d come to investigate the influx here in Gotham after we'd vanquished demons that had taken over these humans at a 24 hour store. The katana he uses is truly… why are you looking at me like that?”

Tim fixed his face, camera ready expression already plastered on. “Nothing. Just something B mentioned, pay attention. Your right shoulder's acting up again, isn’t it? Your feints with that side always stick out—”

The ugly noise Damian made from the back of his throat as he moved further from Tim let him know the impromptu critique had worked to stop him from prying further. “It’s none of your business, Red Robin!”

Damian side stepped a smoking Empusa, blade coming down in an angry arc and followed with a jab that sent it spiraling back into another one of it’s siblings.

Rolling his eyes, Tim swept the legs from under one Empusa, jabbing down the end into what he assumed was the temple of it’s enlarged head, the demon going still after a moment. “I could make it my business! You’re lucky I don’t call B to get you shipped back to Kansas right now.”

Damian’s groan of frustration intensified and he left Tim’s guard of his right side to step back to back with Nero who brandished his own katana brimming with enough excitement to put even Jon in a coma. Side by side, twin blades cut through hide and teeth alike without so much of a gap between them. Tim could see why Damian liked the guy so much.

As Tim whacked his last Empusa across the floor to roll like a bowling ball towards a growing pile of Empusa where both Damian and Nero slashed into simultaneously. When the room went silent, save for their hevaing breaths, Tim addressed the white haired teen before him.

“Nero, right?” 

The teen nodded as he distractedly wiped demon blood from the edge of his sword that seemed to glow a faint blue in the dark. Tim's immediate thought was meta, maybe something similar to Duke’s powers or a magic user closer to something more of Zatanna’s realm. But knowing who the kid was obviously related to and the case at hand... Tim had a feeling it was neither. “Sorry about the net by the way, I’ve been sort of jumpy fighting those things down here.”

Tim felt just a little bad with the smile Nero offered in return for the capture, but he refocused, reminding himself that the kid’s dad had probably hunted Jason. He stopped his frantic line of thinking on what hunting meant for someone like Dante to Jason.

Nero shrugged, throwing the now sheathed blade he had over the back of his shoulder. “Hey, man. It’s fine, I get it. The big one back down that hall you?”

Tim blinked at Nero’s demeanor. “Yeah. I might’ve… blown it up.”

Grinning, Nero laughed it off. “I’ll say. Robin and I came to check it out. We should probably get going before one of those Scarecrow lackeys come sniffing around. It’s only a matter of time before they find Joey too.”

Tilting his head, and following alongside Damian down the hall where he’d taken down the larger Empusa, the three of them stepping carefully around it before Nero brute force opened the door Tim ignored for being so heavily barricaded. “Joey?”

Both Damian and Nero winced at that and Tim knew that the time he had to do recon had significantly dropped. “He was sort of holding us up at the gate, then he kinda realized I wasn’t Larry—”

“Larry?" Tim crossed his arms, staring straight at Damian who looked anywhere but back at him.

Nero answered for him. “Another Scarecrow guy. We kicked his ass back in Park Row.”

Oh, if he wasn't certain before, he was now that this guy was definitely a tourist. Time to add that to Tim’s mental list of infractions the guy and his dad were adding to. Tim nodded, hoping his less than talkative demeanor got across. He gestured for Nero to walk first in front of him and Damian. “We should get going.”

Nero frowned a bit but began to walk forward. “Right.”

Watching the silhouette of Nero’s back wane in the dimness of the tunnels, Tim leaned closer to where he and Damian lagged behind. “Keeping an eye on him, Robin?”

The judgemental look on Damian’s face even through his domino was telling. “Obviously, what else would I be doing?”

“Just making sure. B sent me down here to check out this place. He thinks Hood's disappearance might have something to do with all this demon nonsense. A white haired older man attacked me earlier tonight with a sword. You think Nero might know anything about that?”

Raising his voice, Damian stopped in the middle of the walkway to level a glare at him. “I highly doubt Nero, a boy your age, would be a kidnapper of all people, we’re investigating a trafficking case of all things—!”

“Okay, okay. It was just a question, Robin.”

“I’m not a fool, Drake.”

"Names."

Tim felt a small bit of relief knowing that although Damian said he hadn’t let his guard down, Tim had certainly introduced some sort of doubt. He had a strong feeling the teen in front of them knew exactly who the white haired man that killed Pyg was.

Rearranging his expression for when Nero started to look back over his shoulder, Tim put clasped his hands over his heart and swooned. “Well, it just warmed my old heart there to know my little brother is out there making friends, Robbie dear—”

Damian nearly pushed him face first into a wall getting way, the retching noise in his throat echoing off the tunnel walls. Tim snickered as Damian began to jog ahead, rejoining Nero who’d walked further in front of them.

“Never speak to me like that ever again, Dra— Red Robin. I thought I was going to be sick.”

“Oh, hush. You’re so dramatic.”

As Damian continued in front of him, already in deep conversation with Nero next to him, Tim regarded the already healing cut mark on the pale haired boy’s cheek and the vial of slowly cooling blood tucked into the DNA tester in his belt pocket.

---

“Your shoulder sounds weird.” Nero said in the weird silence that had fell over their duo now trio.

He didn’t hold it against the Red Robin guy, if he’d had a strangely grumpy yet oddly trusting little brother being followed around by a stranger with a sword, he probably would’ve shot first and apologized later too.

He tried not to be nosy, tuning out most of the whispered words he was faintly able to hear down the hall, and Nero tried to focus on wondering what other sort of fucked up demons Red Robin had seen down here to be so jumpy.

Robin, who had been rolling his shoulder back every couple of minutes sighed. “It is an old battle wound, it clicks in the rain at times.”

Tilting his head up towards the sewer ceiling like they were some passage to heaven, he murmured under his breath. “The weather must be foul at the surface.”

Nero snorted. “You sound like an old man.”

“And you look like one.” Damian needled back, obviously gesturing to his hair.

“Oh, so you do jokes now?”

“What’s a joke?”

Nero raised an eyebrow to which Robin remained stubbornly unphased, the cheeky fucker. The boy granted him the smallest twitch of his lips, turning back to look at the hallway they were making their way down.

Red Robin spoke up. “You know, if you told me demons existed a day ago I would’ve assumed it would be anything else. Drugs, hallucination, fear gas induced psychosis… Gotham’s got it all.”

Robin hummed, observing the pathway in front of them. “There are many things on this earth we deem supernatural simply for being outside the living memory of our species. We’ve mistaken dinosaurs for dragons, and the latter for the former. In reality, many of which we deem extraordinary are an ordinary part of a bygone era. After all, science was once seen as magic to the unfamiliar eyes. Who’s to say this isn’t magic mistaken for science?”

Silence. Red Robin coughed and fiddling with the whirring device he'd been checking every so often in his belt. “That was… oddly insightful.”

Then more silence. Before Nero could think of something to say alongside the oddly standoffish Red Robin, a terrified, shrill scream of a woman tore them from their awkward attempts at conversation and the three of them abandoned the small talk for running down the hallway to the source.

In the heavy silence, only the footfalls of boots crunching the earth beneath their feet and the distant steadily growing louder shrieks of people up ahead. The wet earth gave way to cobbled stone, above them a high pillar like structure that spiraled high above them straight up to the surface. At the end of the tunnel led to a chamber, a underground prison deep below the island lined with damp stone overrun to the brim with the roots they’d found lining the tunnels.

It’s medieval energy was complete with iron bars that lined jagged opens where someone had crudely carved rock from stone, people shoved shoulder to shoulder behind them on the second floor, the first a wide open chamber of bloodied stone.

Immediately, they crowded the nearest cell, Robin carefully surveyed the area while Red Robin attempted to get one of the victim’s attention. Only most of them stared blankly back from the darkness, some curled shaking in the corner mumbling to themselves. Attempting to reach out and yank at the locked grates of the barred door, all of them ceased what they were doing at once to stare at him.

“Hey, we’re here to help. Is everyone alright?”

Nothing. They all continued to stare at Red Robin, no, his hand that was touching the bars.

"Uhh, okay? Not hive mind-y at all..."

Reaching forward, Nero gently pried his fingers form the rusted metal and the people all went back to laying down, mumbling, staring into the distance. Weird.

This time, Nero put his hands on the bar, knowing his Devil Bringer would be able to snatch the door right off it’s hinges— and then the screaming started again. As his Devil Bringer grew to the size of the door and began reaching forward, the captive people began pushing back towards the wall in the cell, desperately shaking their heads.

“It’s alright! I’m just trying to get you guys—”

A bright red hot light began to pulse around the metal and Nero hissed as he was force to spring back and let go, the heat being felt even through the metaphysical form of his Devil Bringer. Now that the bars were lit up, he could see symbols etched into the bars where Nero could feel some sort of barrier draw closer to the people within. Drawing Yamato, he attempted to slash the door open knowing the sword could easily cut through steel, only for the sword to ricochet off the metal harshly.

In response, the floor beneath them shook as though another earthquake was occurring, only the rumbling came from a tangle of roots at the perimeter of the cave where they began crawling towards the cell that they were attempting to open, as if they'd somehow sense the distress of the people within.

Quicker than he could comprehend, a new tangle of roots curled at the cell’s door, reinforcing the already enchanted cave with it’s presence. They didn’t attack but Nero did not want to find out what it would begin doing to the people inside if he attempt to hack them away.

It was then he saw the bright blue-green biofilm that seemed to stick and ooze from the tendrils bathing their bodies in an eerie glow.

Nero heaved, feeling as though attempting to do anything near these runes made him feel as though he were walking through molasses. “You might not be wrong about that hive mind thing... I don’t think we can get in there without some magic and a serious weed killer.”

Robin made a noise of discontent, stepping back to look around the other cells. “Scarecrow had these people kidnapped… for what purpose?”

“Essentially, someone needed human lab rats for demonic experimentation, and after Arkham Asylum closed down… I guess that solves the current trafficking issue in Crime Alley.”

Red Robin looked further down to where all of their eyes instinctively sought, the red pulsing blood seeping into plant structures made of a familiar glowing green substance. It lined the walls, it trailed below the earth, it climbed the stone tower that lead to to who knows where up above. Rhythmically, the roots— no branches— writhed. Like a heartbeat it pulsed, it breathed.

Nero shuddered, stepping back as Red Robin continued on. “Someone is convinced they can use demons, their essence, their bodies... to augment humans. In some way, combine demonic essence with Lazarus water to create a more stable substance that will allow even base humans to be able to demonically transform whereas pure Lazarus water would have eventually killed both demon and human alike if not under certain conditions. Those who survive become a part of... whatever this is. Those that don’t…”

They all stared at the growing pool of blood at the edge of the chamber where the floor had but split open like Nero and Robin had seen on the surface. Green sludge bubbled up to the top feeding and dissolving the pit of gnarled roots, slick with the blood of the broken bodies that sat on it’s edge half consumed. The people that they once were soaked into the earth where large winding roots that dug beneath promised of something older and much, much bigger.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Robin said. “Shit.”

A deep voice intoned from the shadows behind them.

“What vulgar language, grandson.”

Nero startled, Blue Rose already heavy in his hand, aiming to the darkness.

The man before him was tall. Nero immediately was aware of the way he loomed, looking over Nero as in the same way someone might find themselves watching a a bug before crushing it beneath their foot. His hair was combed back, dark midnight curls tracked with short pure white strands similar to his own behind his ears. The way his dark cape blended into the mossy damp walls around them unsettled Nero who hadn’t heard the man creep up at all. “Who the hell are you?”

When he met his eyes, he was reminded of how similar they were to the ever present green that had pervaded his stay in Gotham. They trailed over their group stern and regal before landing on Red Robin who stood next to him. “Detective.”

He then turned to Robin, who tensed. “Damian.”

There was a sharp intake of breathe over his shoulder at the address and but Robin said nothing to the man before him. If Nero didn’t see the boy in his peripherals he could’ve been convinced that he’d run off in the middle of the man’s arrival in silence. “I suppose you believe yourself above introducing me to your acquaintance.”

At his other side, Nero turned slightly to Red Robin. Gone was the tired yet determined demeanor he’d had since coming across them in the tunnels. The vigilante next to him had his bo at the ready and calm expression on his face. Still, Nero could see the way his eyes dilated even in the dim tunnel glow, never once moving his line of vision away from the older man.

It put Nero’s guard up higher than it already had been from the man’s entrance.

“You see, my last source told me the Yamato was in pieces on the island of Fortuna.”

As if hearing it’s name, Yamato hummed in as the man drew closer. Nero clasped the scabbard of the blade tighter, afraid that the slightest movement would have Yamato drawing it’s own blade from where it was sheathed.

“And to my surprise, here my grandson and the Detective bring you, with a blade from the bloodline of Sparda, the Dark Knight of the Underworld.”

Nero paused, thinking back to his fight with Sanctus’ on Fortuna and the words he spoke about his bloodline. He hadn’t paid much mind to it then, the reason for his adoption and induction into the Order being hinted to be for the sake of being used hadn’t had bothered him as much when Kyrie had been in danger. “Sparda. Everyone’s obsessed with this guy. I mean it’s been what? A thousand years since the guy walked the earth? Though, I guess you would know a lot about that, old man.”

The man’s eyes looked over Nero like he was nothing other than some walking tube of a blood sample. Being looked down on was nothing new for Nero with his life, but the way the man before him saw him as not just something beneath him but as barely even human irked him. Speaking levelly, the man stalked forward more demonic than Nero had seen from actual devils he’d slain.

“Interesting creatures devils are… they do not eat, they do not cry. Nothing beyond an eternal grasp for power.”

It was like Nero was being talked at, not to. He opened his mouth to snap at the guy only for him to turn away. Nero felt both slighted and grateful to be out of his gaze. The idea of the man before him having any sort of interest in his blood or his arm left him with a sick feeling building in his stomach. “I believe we can all learn something useful from them, don’t you think Timothy?”

Timothy… did he mean Red Robin? From his left, Nero felt Red Robin tense, stepping forward. “Is that what they are, Ra’s? Studies? Experiments you can cut open and sew together as you please?”

Red Robin’s rage comforted Nero just a little. It was nice to know that even with their distrust filled rough start that the brand of scientific interest that seemed to fuel the man— this Ra’s, before them and what he’d done to humans, to demons— was as repulsive to him as it was to Nero.

“Oh, Detective. I see you still have not opened your mind to the greater possibilities of our world. But, yes. I suppose so… for every great medical breakthrough there was a first trial, no? I find it hard to believe you’ve no interest in the matter. Those files documenting our discoveries seemed quite intriguing to you after all.”

Red Robin paused, carefully taking a moment to respond. “Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.”

Ra’s let out a little huff of laughter. “You’ll grow out of your childish morality one day, Timothy. I can see it within you, it is only a matter of how much you want it. My most recent success is a testament to how the human experience may be evolved. His inspiration comes from someone quite similar to you… Nero, was it? Hm.”

Wait, similar to Nero? How did this old man even know who he was?

“Now, to test your mettle.”

Nero knew fighting words when he heard them. Drawing Yamato, it’s blue glint warped the shadows around them turning Ra’s face in front of them into a twisted expression of malicious curiosity. Feeling like he’d just crossed some invisible line of no return, Nero steeled his grip, trying not to think of reasons why Ra’s would be so happy to find himself on the end of Nero’s blade.

Looking for reassurance, Nero stared back to Robin who had been oddly subdued coming face to face with Ra’s.

Ra’s seemed to take this as a cue, now addressing Robin directly. “If you wish, Damian, aid my knight and you may return home with a place at me and your mother’s side.”

Nero didn’t have to begin worrying at all when at his right, Robin said nothing and drew his own katana as well.

“...Very well.” Ra’s then raised a hand, making a beckoning motion to something from behind him. A ear splitting noise screamed through the long tunnels, the shrill sound of metal on metal. Within the darkness that permeated the room, a lurking mass came slowly into the dim blue-green glow of the writhing roots around them. Nero’s sword pulsed in tandem.

“Rosso Angelo, kill the boy and take the blade.”

Ah, fuck.

The last thing Nero saw before he brought his blade up were bright acid green eyes and the glint of red armor.

Chapter 5: haste is of the devil

Notes:

The subtitle of this chapter is HOLYFREAKINAIRBALL WHY ARE MY CHAPTERS SO LONG would you believe me if i told you that the original was 8k?

(also help, im running out of devil themed sayings)

Also trust that I am kicking my feet and giggling every time I get a comment theorizing. YALL ARE GONNA MAKE ME SPILL, STOPPPP IM A YAPPER

(please don't stop I love hearing all your ideas...)

Also to my dear giftee, just saying this is probably confirming you know who I am already PRETEND U DO NOT SEE OK ILY

Batman was a creature of habit that thrived on meticulous research and careful planning. When he had to behave unexpectedly, of course, he was no rash hot head incapable of discipline. Wherever he went there was always an element of managed control.

That was until one got his birds involved.

Ra’s al Ghul supposed it was a reach asking for a man who so often frustrated him with his own idea of humanity to put aside biological response ingrained for child rearing. At times, it did serve him though.

Using his wayward grandson and his father’s most promising protégé, capturing the demon boy would be a breeze. Once he had the child and the sword he carried, the elder would soon be there to follow with it’s counterpart.

Furthermore, the runt his daughter had taken a liking to all those years ago had proved himself a resource— the Detective was becoming rather distracted the longer time went on without him.

As the Lazarus Pits watered the roots writhing beneath his feet, the excess carnage from the trials conducted purged weaker specimens as blood fuel for the Hell Tree beneath… Ra’s al Ghul felt as though everything was going exceedingly well.

To think those imbeciles who sullied the name of doctor would have kept using the genius of the Arkham facilities to simply create potent drugs for chaos and panic. Though he supposed it should’ve been expected when he’d chosen to deal with a pig and that crane. It only seemed right to hone the resources the Arkhams had left behind and use what they had to offer.

Demons had lived for thousands of years and their powers could be conquered and harnessed by others— the wasted potential was egregious. Still, it was a little much to expect from the fools that kept his Detective constantly busy to think beyond the hedonistic goals benefiting them in the near present.

As much as Ra’s al Ghul loathed humanity at times, he could appreciate their easy predictability. Humans had always been self serving creatures of habit— he would know, being over six-hundred years old. Ra’s al Ghul looked forward to the day his Detective and his wayward ilk, who operated beyond the selfishness of man, opened their minds to a world that had more than justice to fuel it.

But no matter, Ra’s had greater things to attend to than a flock of squabbling children. The Detective would be arriving soon and it would do Ra’s no good to see him before their time. Rosso Angelo and his handler could manage this and if not… his star experiment could do with another round of recalibration.

And so Ra’s al Ghul descended back down towards hell.

---

Rosso Angelo was strong.

Now Nero’s grip was nothing to balk at. Before Dante, he had been pretty certain if anyone in the Order tried to stand toe to toe with him, he’d win every time. It had gotten Credo fuming more often than not and Kyrie on the sidelines trying to quiet her cheering.

But the first blow Nero caught with Yamato made his knees buckle. An ugly grinding sound skittering across where his blade and the spiked baseball bat shaped club groaned against his, an equal strength meeting him. It had been the surprise of heavy pressure that caught Nero off guard and he could tell in the angel’s too intelligent eyes that it caught that.

Before he could readjust his grip, the bulky figure drew back with a swiftness he wouldn’t have thought possible for something its size. He could feel his form stumble and Nero knew the demon before him had let him off easy from the way it simply watched the opening. It twirled it’s bat, almost mockingly, before winding up for a blow Nero was sure would make him a home run skidmark across the ceiling.

When Nero began to begin to duck the mass of hurtling metal, its spikes left his view and Nero belatedly realized he was mid air and Rosso Angelo had dropped the bat to sink into the ground. Nero could only barely raise his hands to block some of the force flying towards his gut.

As a balled fist knocked him clean off his feet, Nero felt several layers of jagged rock dig into his back before he stilled, the air sucked from his lungs upon impact.

…Did he just get fucking juked by a demon?

Nero peeled himself from the wall, shaking off rubble, pissed as hell. “Oh, so we’re playing dirty then?”

A dome of metal masked Rosso Angelo’s face save for the holes at it’s top reserved for the horns that spiral from it’s head and the slit of space where pits of green eyes glow from beneath.

“Sloppy…” The knight spoke through heavy metallic distortion. A huff of breath echoes from where its face was blocked with the visor of his armored helmet and Nero swears the demon is laughing at him.

“You wanna play ball? Catch this.” And Nero’s Devil Bringer surges forward in bright blue to grasp the bat from the ground, reeling it back before slamming it across the demon’s face with vigor. Rosso Angelo seemed pretty intent on playing games— well, tough on him, Nero wasn’t a big team player.

The knight was sent stumbling, its head twisted to the side from the hit. Rosso Angelo shook his head, like it had gotten dizzy and before he could reorient himself, Nero sent another home run full force into his side, not stopping until a knee buckled to the ground.

Left, right, left, right— how many times did Nero swing? It started blurring together after a bit.

Rosso Angelo fell to the ground, his armor slightly dented but not damaged enough to be curled in on himself like that. Nero thinks for a moment in mild disappointment that the demon had given up until he realizes the knight has just been staring up at him. Within a paused moment, the knight sends a plume of dirt straight into Nero’s face.

“Asshole!” Nero sputters, not exactly sure where the course of his next swing goes.

THWACK!

When he blinks the earth from his eyes, hoping to block the next blow from the demon before he could take advantage of Nero’s weakness, he freezes in place feeling nauseous.

From where Nero stands, Rosso Angelo crowds Red Robin away from the club he’d just swung blind, taking the hit in lieu for pinning the guy to the wall behind them. It’s devilishly lucky, replacing one horrible situation for another. To Nero, the world holds it’s breath as he watches Red Robin look almost like a statue staring up at the knight with it’s dented red visor and braced wings flaring behind him like a shield.

As if under a trance, Rosso Angelo then slowly begins to reach his other arm for Red Robin and Nero wonders if he’ll make things worse if he tries to use Yamato to cut the demon knight’s legs from beneath him. He carefully doesn’t think too long about how he’d have made Red Robin a headline just seconds ago.

The stunned silence breaks when Robin propels down from the ceiling, landing awkwardly over Rosso Angelo’s back. He tips dangerously and Nero swears the demon makes a jerky aborted motion, pulling his hand away from where it pins Red Robin, to hover where Robin teeters towards the ground.

The motion goes by wholly unnoticed by the kid who regains his balance miraculously and brandishes his katana without mercy. Stabbing towards a chink in the armor plates of Rosso Angelo’s back that allowed for his wings to stick out, Robin cut deeply into flesh just beneath one of his feathered draconic wings.

The demon's earlier pause of violence is soon forgotten when Rosso Angelo instinctively bucks off his stowaway, Robin soaring through the air where Nero is forced to let go of the demon’s bat in his Devil Bringer’s hand to snatch the kid from the air. He sets Robin down, his wide eyes immediately going back to find Rosso Angelo in the room, now staggering off to attempt ripping the katana still stuck in his back.

His Devil Bringer’s spectral form deflates, absorbed back into his physical arm and Nero reaches a hand out to Red Robin. The vigilante was still breathing hard as Nero pulled him from where he leaned against the wall to regroup with the younger Robin.

“I know how to take a fall.” Robin grumbled, despite obviously being a bit disoriented after he was tossed around.

“Sure.” Nero decides to pick his battles, just glad the kid isn’t a bird themed pancake across the far wall. Speaking of pancakes, Nero turned back to Red Robin whose silent gaze was still trained on the staggering Rosso Angelo.

“You alright, man? I didn’t end up actually hitting you did I?” Nervously, Nero nudges him after a moment. “Red Robin, er, Timothy?”

At the mention of his real name, Red Robin jolts out of his quiet thoughts almost immediately turning on Nero with a panic wave of his hands. “No! No, I’m totally fine.”

Yeah right, and Nero was the Demon Knight Sparda. “You had me freaked out for a second there. I was wailing pretty hard on that guy.”

Looking rattled— no, on the verge of something— he speaks in low tones. “No, there’s just something about this one that feels different from the Empusa and the demons back at Pyg’s laboratory…”

When Rosso Angelo manages to pull the long length of metal from his back, he flicks his own blood from it’s edge. Nero adjusted the grip on Yamato, a strong feeling the angel was debating on testing his sword work.

Feeling less guilty that Red Robin seemed more stunned by coming face to face with a proper artificial demon than almost being battered by Nero with a giant club of metal, he attempts a lighter comment.

“So I guess your grandpa managed to figure out how to make proper artificial demons then. Named dropped you, too, the asshole. Still, would never have pegged you for a Timothy.”

Red Robin sighed as though he’d just aged a decade in the span of a minute and Nero wondered if they all should have just pretended it didn’t happen.

“This may as well happen." Oh? Was Nero about to get name privileges? Did that make him a part of the Justice League? He hoped not. Oh shit, what if he had to sign an NDA? Nero didn't know what a NDA was. "It’s Tim, not Timothy, and he’s not my grandfather. He’s Damian’s.”

Nero’s face twisted, still thoroughly unsettled by the man’s demeanor. He sent a silent prayer to the universe that decided to make him an orphaned only child. “So glad I don’t have to worry about family drama… you heroes are weird.”

Tim gave him a deadpan look. “I fight crime alongside a man in a bat themed suit. A praying mantis demon almost bit my head off and I set it on fire with a lighter and a can of shark repellent an hour ago. It can definitely get weirder.”

Seeing as they both observed the angelic demon in medieval armor recover from being stabbed through the back with a two, almost three foot sword…

He wasn’t wrong about that.

“Pay attention you chattering gossips!” Damian’s shrill voice echoed in the chamber. “This beast still has my katana.”

Rosso Angelo looks straight at Damian, as he gives the bloodied katana in his hand a careful look. Then, cocking his head, he rolled his right shoulder twice. A gruff, grating noise echoing from the suit of armor like a red cape to a bull.

Nero didn’t have to look at the kid’s face to know he had murder on his mind. “Tch. First Drake, now you. I don’t need a demon to tell my right guard is—!”

Nero doesn’t catch the rest of his sentence before Damian launches himself towards the hulking figure with nothing more than a few R throwing stars.

Rosso Angelo’s reaction time has the demon expertly batting away the incoming volley of metal in a blur. Nero goes right, ready to yank Damian back for the futile attack. Until he realizes that throwing stars aren’t all that made contact with the knight’s stolen blade.

What probably seemed like just another glint of metal thrown haphazardly at his face, wrapped three times around the middle of the katana he held and flew backward. From his end of the grapple, Damian snatches his katana from where it flies out of Rosso Angelo’s loose grip and into his own.

And just like the little shit he is, Damian’s grin is sharp and mocking. He returns the knight’s early words in a cheeky tone. “Sloppy.”

A deep rumbling emanates from the armor that Rosso Angelo dons, like a sports car engine exhaust. He turns towards where Nero had dropped his battering club in lieu of catching Damian. Only, before he can truly step forward, he begins stumbling.

Nero, Tim, and Rosso Angelo stood by in confused silence until Damian's face lit up like a beacon.

“You little shit, did you pick pocket me?” Tim reeled on Damian who looked very smug.

“Of course I poisoned my blade with the paralytic you mentioned. What you think I just charged in bullheaded? ”

“Well.”

“Shut up, Drake.”

Deciding to do his job instead of needle at his brother, Tim pats his own belt down before cursing. “With demonic metabolism, we won’t have long. You still have those electromagnetic cuffs from our last mission to space?”

However, Nero wasn’t going to stand around waiting for the Bats to come up with a way to detain a literal demon. Instead, he took matters into his own hands, his Devil Bringer forming it’s spectral state, a large glowing copy of his arm wrapping around Rosso Angelo as the paralytic took its toll.

As Nero stilled the demon below him, he caught a glimpse of where Yamato had finally chipped through it’s armor, the broken knight’s helmet revealed what lay below from a fragment that had chipped off. When raised Yamato to stab down, he stilled, seeing a flash of white hair and warning behind toxic green eyes—

Large calloused hands wrapped around his forearm from his side. “Wait.”

For a moment, he wondered if he was about to get a lecture from either Tim or Damian. Gotham’s rules were famous after all. But when Nero turned his head, he looked up to find a very familiar white haired man loosely holding his forearm. “Dante?”

A small bit of relief settled around him now that the man was here to have his back— and then he remembered the guy disappearing on him abruptly without notice.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“You know, seeing the sights, meeting the locals…”

Backtracking and ignoring the Dante’s deflection he shook his head, looking back to Rosso Angelo to make sure his Devil Bringer was pinning the demon down properly. And then Nero latched on to the fact that Dante still held his sword arm from descending. “Wait... you know this thing?”

Dante blinked, eyebrows furrowing. “You can’t tell there’s a—”

When a large metallic capture net came soaring from his side, Dante seemed to have been more proactive than he’d been, Rebellion already unsheathed to cut cleanly through it. Before Nero could stop another misunderstanding from happening between Dante and the who was proving to be a very trigger happy Red Robin, the man spoke up almost excited.

“Oh, hey! You’re that kid from the Alley!”

Nero looked to where the net had been deployed only to meet Tim’s expression clean of any friendly recognition whatsoever. Straightening himself out to face Tim head on, he had a strong feeling that he’d just walked into a meeting that he hadn’t gotten the memo for.

Abruptly, a familiar katana cut between the two of them. Just as Nero was going to start cussing out Damian for the bad aim, and then froze taking in the twisted look on his face.

“So you are working with whoever made this?”

Looking back at the half conscious knight at his feet and Dante at his back, he could see the way Tim had Damian grouped away as well.

…Wait, did they think that Dante was a part of this? Working with what, Ra’s? Scarecrow? Nero stepped in front of Dante mirroring Damian and Tim, feeling equally off kilter himself.

“Dante— he came with me. The business that hunts demons down? His shebang, I’ve just been tagging along as of late.” From the way Tim’s dead eyes look was still focused solely on Dante, even while he and Damian were talking to Nero made him wonder if he was missing step or two. It would be right up Dante’s alley to piss off some of the Bats their first day in Gotham.

“Look, I’m sure there’s some sort of misunderstanding going on here—”

Tim cut him off, distrust already solidified in his expression. “Then some other white haired man attacked me in an alley? Kidnapped Hood a month ago?”

Nero sputtered, a sinking feeling in his gut. “Attacked?”

When he made to look to Dante, he found he didn’t have to ask with the man’s embarrassed demeanor. From the way he carried himself, Nero wasn't sure Dante was getting how serious Tim and Damian seemed to be.

Tim continued on before Nero could, giving him no time to breathe. “Why would he not want to hurt Rosso Angelo? He didn’t hesitate to kill Pyg in Crime Alley. If demons are as foul as you say they are, if you hunt them, why would you not treat this one in the same manner?”

While Nero was still stuck on the fact that Dante had killed someone while they had barely been in Gotham a day, Dante, in all his idiot fucking glory chose to speak then, foregoing damage control to damn both of them with his words. “Well ain’t that rude, you’re talkin’ to a half-demon, you know.”

Damian's expression shuttered, turning stone cold. His eyes immediately went to observe Nero, dissecting and pulling layers of himself apart before him until Damian asked— no, confirmed to himself quietly. "You're not meta are you?"

Nero instinctively pulled his arm behind him, feeling small, his mind immediately went back to Fortuna and the way Kyrie had stared at him when she’d come across Credo beaten with this damned cursed arm between them. This was spiraling out of control and Nero calmed his tone, hoping to reiterate that despite his heritage he had nothing to do with what was happening in Gotham.

"Damian, I really think you guys have something wrong here—"

SLASH!

Nero stepped back, holding a hand to his cheek with a hiss. Damian’s voice cut as sharply as the katana that he brandished, and Nero could do nothing but listen when he felt fresh blood bead in the same spot that Tim had gotten the first time they met.

"Do not speak my name, demon!"

Even though Nero felt the skin there begin to stitch together already, it felt deeper. Belatedly, he remembered something about a paralytic on it's edge. To make matters worse, before he could explain Tim reached toward Damian’s shoulder, shaking it with eyes shining with manic vindication.

"I knew it. That's the unknown sequence that was popping up in their blood samples..."

Damian turned back with his sword still bloody to bat his hand away. "You knew?"

Wilting just a bit, but mostly excited to be proved right, Tim tilted his gauntlet towards Damian, a feverish ramble leaving him in a breathless burst. "Half of Dante's DNA comes up as unreadable in our database. I'm guessing Nero's mother must've been base human since around three quarters of his genome line up with more base human data samples than those with the meta gene—"

"You're rambling."

"—so I thought the quarter that was giving me trouble had to do with his abilities but it makes more sense with Dante sharing half his DNA, of course some of his genetic material would be unreadable due to our lack of information on demonic biology—"

Nero went cold.

"What."

The tense overlap of conversation ceased at Nero's quiet words. He felt everyone's eyes on him but Nero’s mind focused solely on his next train of thought, all else went quiet. He refused to look at the still man behind him. “Half of his DNA… what does that mean.”

When Tim seemed as though he’d bite on his words more than he already had, Nero turned to Damian. He was sure his expression was an ugly sight but it didn’t take long before Damian’s blunt tone told him what he needed to be known.

The lack of animosity that was on his face would have comforted Nero beforehand but at the moment, little mattered beyond the truth. Obediently, almost kind, Damian replied.

“As in, the way a child would with their parent. Though it seems Drake has more information the matter than I do and assumed you knew this. Care to explain?”

“Robin.” Tim interjected, suddenly bereft of his previous excitement.

His brother glared back at him, pointing an accusing finger. “You already knew who this Dante was from Father, then. You deigned not to tell me you knew of Nero either. You conducted this test, did you not, Drake? As Todd would have said, you made a bed, perhaps you should lay in it—”

Nero didn’t care for the rest of their conversation, instead turning on Dante who had gone silent next to him.

Breathless, Nero calmly gave Dante a chance to come clean. “Are you my father?”

Dante’s expression clammed up, cold. Panicked. Nero kept the white hot rage behind his eyes at bay. “I’m not.”

Nero wasn’t convinced, but pushed on giving him the benefit of the doubt. “Then… a brother?”

A distant voice mumbled softly that 'with the amount of DNA that wouldn’t be possible' but Nero was done pretending like his ears couldn’t pick up on such low tones. Not bothering to turn around, Nero snapped with all the grace of a snarling dog. “Shut up, Red Robin.”

Nero told himself he didn’t care for their sudden silence, the only thing that mattered right now was Dante’s pale face and the expression he got when he was lying. It made the sickening feeling in Nero’s gut crystallize like he’d swallowed an anchor to a boat that was sinking.

Dante dragged a hand down his face before pushing his hair back from his face, freezing oddly when the front of his bangs spiked up and he tried to back up, looking more cornered animal than man— that is until Nero crowded his space, snarling.

“Who am I to you? Why do you have that fucking look on your face?”

“Nothing! You’re nothing to me, Nero.”

Reeling back, Nero wished he Dante would’ve hit him instead. And the worst part of it was normally, the ugly guilt stricken look on Dante’s face telling Nero even he didn’t believe a single word he was saying would’ve been enough for Nero to push it to the side.

Now? Nero really wasn’t sure how genuine anything the man told him anymore. Even with his back to the wall, Dante was choosing to lie.

“Fuck, I didn’t mean it like that. You know I didn’t—”

And really, Nero didn’t know.

It made him realize he actually didn’t know a goddamn thing about the man before him other than the man’s demon father that Nero spent seventeen years of his life listening to sermon after sermon about.

Nero knew he’d been told of some vague heritage to a demon living thousands of year prior, speaking of relation the same way school teachers did when they said everyone was related in some way, human descendants from a long, long line of strangers. Not like how families were related, of course. To be a son, a brother, a father… That was different. Sacred, they said. But Nero thought it hadn’t applied to him so he didn’t pay much attention when that sermon came around.

He knew Dante had given Nero his brother’s sword despite spending those first meetings insistent he give it back to his family. He knew that for some reason Dante had chosen to let him keep it. At the time, he’d arrogantly thought maybe for his skill or respect or some semblance of camaraderie over the course of his flaunt across Fortuna. Maybe it hadn’t been for those reasons at all.

Or maybe Nero could speak of the way Dante gave a good chunk of the rewards he got from hunts back to a pair of orphans just outside of Red Grave. Perhaps of the quiet moments during a case where not everyone went home happily ever after, the way he treated the widows, the children without their parents, a childless father. He could talk about his annoying habit of losing his shirt and eating nothing but pizza, cherry sundaes, and beer.

But really, was any of that something of substance?

Could Nero truly say that he knew who Dante was at his core from the tiny glimpse into his life that the man had let him see? Did it mean anything in comparison to the vast majority Nero had no privy to?

“Nero, listen, I—”

CLUNK.

Nero didn’t catch much beyond those words, not because he didn’t want to- actually, they were probably the most important piece of conversation he wanted to know.

From the shadows, a man slipped by his side draped in hood of dark ruined fabric that barely hid a face covered futilely with burlap. Through large misshapen holes, pinched and rotted flesh could be seen, the man's jaw crooked and lopsided from the gas mask that seemed to be embedded into his actual face. Nero didn't think any other occupation that could fit the man than to stand in a field somewhere still, frightening children and birds.

For a moment, Nero didn’t register exactly what the man had said to get his attention.

“Shit, move!” Instead, Tim’s voice came from behind him and almost comically, Nero began to look down where a metal canister rolled to a stop at his and Dante’s feet.

It was the cackling explosion of heat and smoke that burst between them that made the world fall into a haze of blurred terror. When the dust had settled and Nero had begun to get up from his hands and knees, grasping at the earth below him, the air smelled of fear.

A rattling distorted voice echoed in his ears, spinning circles around his head that made him sick. “Cover your face, Rosso Angelo… the blade! Take the blade!”

Panic surged through Nero as he held Yamato tighter and at the next glimpse of moment he swung the blade out wildly until he heard a pained yell.

---

Dante didn’t remember where he was.

Breathing heavy, he ran as quick as he could through the gnarled forest bordering the house that he knew he wasn’t supposed to go in, but since Vergil tagged him and ran in, so he just had to go. Right?

But maybe he should start heading back. The sun was going down and it made it so dark in here. He knew Mom probably was worried sick and even if he knew he’d get in trouble, he could just blame it on his brother.

“That’s it, that’s it! No need to panic, no need for rebellion…”

But Dante wanted to play tag with his brother! He definitely needed a sword to beat Vergil. After all, he’d been taller than him since last summer!

“No, Dante. You’re doing it wrong.”

Was that his brother’s voice? Feeling too rageful for his small body, Dante roared back. “You don’t know everything, Vergil!”

Vergil held his sword in front of him like he did when they were kids, like it was a shield instead of a blade. The boy, his big brother, frowned like he always did when a problem frustrated him to no end. “…Who’s Vergil?”

Dante stumbled back, suddenly winded and cold. When he blinked, his eyes swam with colors and the shape of a face so like his brothers and yet…

Slumping to the earth under his knees, green lush grass— no, dark black cobblestone he found he couldn’t catch his breath. Rebellion— no, the toy sword Dad had gotten both of them for their birthday slipped from his fingers.

A sudden sharp pain radiated from his chest and he looked ahead to find the cold eyes of his brother standing over him. Vergil had never looked at him that way… had he? “Foolishness, Dante. Don’t you know I always win?”

Vergil crept closer, his face barred of recognition and it was all Dante could do to get up and begin to run away. He didn’t care if his chest hurt, if his eyes were blurry, if he’d dropped his toy sword somewhere in all that tall, tall grass that cut his cheeks and left him running blind. That wasn’t his big brother because his brother would have never hurt him for anything.

Even though his heart kept screaming otherwise, there was some voice in the back of his head that told him his brother had been gone a long, long time.

Chapter 6: give the devil his due

Notes:

I debated one million different comments I could leave here but then I started to yap about what goes down so Im just gonna sprint while Im ahead ENJOYYY THIS BIG BOY

The second Bruce got more than a blurry video of the last man to see Jason, he had a file ready.

Dante, no recorded last name, had lived a interesting life up until the age of nine where all records disappeared of the boy after a house fire on his family property just outside of Red Grave City leaving Dante missing and his mother and brother dead. There had been no record of a father, but oddly, some eyewitness reports from his hometown spoke of a white haired man being in the children's lives, until a year before the incident.

From there, Bruce followed a long line of runaway reports and juvenile thievery by one Tony Redgrave, until an older woman in the city came to claim the young boy as an apprentice in her weapons shop. A few obituaries mentioned being survived by a granddaughter, one Nico Goldstein. Other morgue biopsies detailed DNA from the remains of what assumed to be the fire that had ravaged the town, killing both young apprentice and the woman that took him in.

Dante had then been reborn seeming from nowhere, a few early jobs being marked offhandedly in seventh page newspaper columns. Bruce had sighed looking at the cheesy older ads he’d found swimming around about a devil banishing service. After shaky early years, Dante only grew in popularity from then, moving town to town with stellar reviews. From what Bruce could see, the man was the city’s very defining hero.

There was talk of the man’s methods, of course, he hadn’t brushed over the very damning testimonies from Fortuna, with hysteria surrounding the white haired man who’d burst through a cathedral skylight to assassinate who was essentially their Pope. Though the deeper Bruce went, the more he noted how the island nation addressed themselves as a self proclaimed ‘Order’ who prided themselves on secrecy and a strict policy towards outsiders.

Bruce decided to stop there and didn’t attempt to go much further on the matter with his own gripes with Gothamites and their own brand of animosity towards visitors.

All in all, Fortuna seemed a rather dated island city who’s main attraction was their steadfast devotion to a demon knight they say lived thousands of years ago. Bruce knew the sentiment was less popular around the world, though a large following was also present in, as fate would have it, Red Grave City. There were other minor pings from around the world over the years as well, St. Lucia and other small island nations, nothing more than a short while venturing from his home base of operations that was obviously Red Grave City.

When Bruce had started pushing deeper into his research, he wondered how he could have missed a rather large come up from the man and the peculiar city that was as close to Gotham as Blüdhaven would have been an obvious point of interest.

Red Grave City seemed to fit in quite well with their area. Where Gotham leaned heavily into it’s Art Deco and Nouveau, the pictures Bruce had managed to find of Red Grave quietly boasted times in an ornate Victorian age, neoclassical inspired architecture, and all sorts of settings he knew Jason would have loved to get his hands on.

It had an anachronistic look and stubborn resistance to the sleek modernization that had spread across most metropolitan areas, but even with it’s implementation of subways and apartments and neon lit signs had still kept it’s soul with claws and teeth. Nothing came close to Gotham, but Bruce could admit it had its charm.

With the current supernatural instances that had plagued his city and little to no communication from his more magically inclined counterparts who the majority were off world at the moment, he assumed it was in the realm of some sort of arcane nonsense.

Really, under different circumstances, Bruce hated to admit he might’ve offered a hand out to this Dante. It irked him to know this man, who was like him in many ways, had been someone capable of judging his son and enacting the exact sort of punishment he seemed to hold for a range of bounties over the years.

If there was one thing that Bruce wished the most, was that Dante had seen beyond the armor Jason put on.

---

When Bruce finally arrived at the scene, he knew something was wrong.

Detecting gas in the air, his cowl automatically extended over his nose and exposed mouth area and Bruce scanned the edges of the room for Scarecrow, but the man was long gone by now. The only sign was the purple colored smoke that still permeated the air and erratic, unpolished movements that were uncharacteristic of Dante in the video Tim had sent him just minutes ago.

Only, Bruce had a feeling from the way both Tim and Damian— who was supposed to be in Kansas, but he’ll deal with that later— had stalled putting their own gas masks over their faces that this might be something more tailored.

He’d checked their vitals through their suit’s connecting to his nearby, but there was nothing but the normal racing heart rate and accumulation of sweat that was associated with their base readings for vigilante work.

Without Oracle, Bruce spoke to Alfred who was back home at the Batcomputer manning comms. “Alfred, can you run diagnostics—”

“—on the compound in the air, sir? Yes, I’ve already cross referenced it with Crane’s previous strain of madness and found a range of difference in how it targets the victim. There is an element we have no record of beyond it’s presence in the so called demons roaming Gotham proper and from the lad in front of you.”

Bruce hummed in thanks, silencing the connection. He then dropped down from his perch to where a boy with white hair sat on the ground. With his back against the wall, holding the sharp end of a blue tinted katana out, Bruce carefully stood further in the peripherals of the boy’s glazed view.

Tim came up to his side, his respirator not quite covering new bandages on his cheek, the side of his neck, a bit of white gauze winding over one of his hands that hadn’t a glove on. Immediately, he began speaking, sounding out of breath and Bruce couldn’t even get to feel the relief that Tim was open to speaking to him after the tense conversation they’d split from.

“Scarecrow made off with one of Ra’s experiments, Rosso Angelo, who I’m sure you already know—”

“I do, but—”

“—anyway, they seemed initially invested in Nero’s katana but as soon as the fear gas hit, aimed for Dante’s greatsword instead. I think Ra’s insinuated that their weapons have some sort of ability to fast track the science he’s trying to accomplish here—”

Bruce sighed. “Red Robin.”

“—but honestly? I think all of that was probably a trap set to lure Dante here. To Ra’s, if Nero hadn’t been here then you would have corralled him down here anyway and gotten Dante vulnerable—”

“Red Robin.”

“—and even though weren’t exposed long to the gas in the air, I think it was more effective on them than me and Damian, I think maybe there’s some sort of demonic element to it—?”

“Son, breathe.” Cutting through Tim’s slew of information to put a hand on his shoulder and brush his too long bangs from his eyes— he needed a haircut, he should probably remind Alfred— Bruce’s eyes focused on messy bandages plastered to the corner of his cheek.

Tim frowned when Bruce trailed his finger over it sternly. “Sitrep on this here before we get into it?”

Sue him, Bruce couldn’t find it in himself to focus back on the pertinent information being sent his way until he knew his wayward sons were in one piece. Pushing his hand away, Tim frowned. “For fucks sake, B it’s not the time. It’s just a papercut.”

Moving on to Damian at his side, still mildly suspicious, Bruce continued to speak. “That papercut got you chased down by demons. And I thought you ran off to do recon.”

Ignoring the first part of Damian’s sentence, Tim cut in swiftly.

“Ergo, the papercut.” Tim was rolling his eyes, Bruce could feel it even with his back turned. Still, he patted Damian over who halfheartedly bat his investigating away, his irritated huffs barely audible through his own rebreather.

“Totally safe paper work until a demon crashed the study sesh. Still in one piece though, see?”

Damian piped up. “Didn’t you say Father sent you down here—?”

“Oh, whatever. Aren’t you supposed to be on a farm in bumfuck nowhere?”

Knowing this would turn into one of their many spats Bruce knew he couldn’t handle with Jason still missing and the finding that Ra’s al Ghul had been in Gotham under his nose for the last month, he nipped the argument in the bud.

“Alright, alright. Can’t change the fact we’re all here now, can we?”His boys shrugged, both glaring and mumbling at each other under their breaths. Although he hadn’t said much, his being here seemed to have to cooled whatever high stress situation they’d previously been involved in. Looking back down to where he’d put the white haired teen, Bruce sighed, already anticipating a rather sleepless night.

Turning back to the boy on the ground, couldn’t stop himself from kneeling before him to slowly place a hand on his heaving shoulders. From the glazed look on his face, he could tell the burst of fear gas had probably gotten him early on. His pupils were still blown, characteristic of a hallucinogen like fear toxin in a human’s system. But although he was breathing quickly, Nero had chosen to sit and stay still after his initial lash of violent fear.

As Bruce reached carefully in to his belt to administer antidote for the most recent strain of fear gas, barring the new demon element, he carefully monitored the boy’s vitals as the the agent began calming what human aspects the strain affected. As the toxin began to fade, Bruce caught his tilting head before propping him gently against the cave ground.

The boy was doing a lot better than the elder, Dante, who’d taken to the flight instead of fight, running off as soon as Nero had gotten a good chunk out of him and Scarecrow and Rosso Angelo took his sword straight from his hands. From the results of test Tim ran on the sample he’d taken from Dante and his son’s own from Nero, Bruce believed the strain targeted more demon related biological structures than they did human.

Having only a quarter of demon DNA, Bruce could see the new strain began to wear off on the boy quicker than he expected. Getting up, he turned back to his sons, Batman slipping into place. Red Robin and the younger vigilante straightened at his tone.

“Tell me about the demons.”

---

When Nero woke up, he blinked dazedly at a ceiling of wet earth and slimy plant branches. Not a great sight, but still not the worst situation he’s ever napped in. And then the headache set in and he began to remember the blurry haze of fear and darkness and hands trying to pull Yamato away from—

Nero shot up, his hands immediately going to the scabbard that still held the blade. If he lost the thing, Dante would kill him. Speaking of Dante, where did…

A heavy weight pressed on his shoulder. “Dante?”

“Unfortunately not, Nero.”

Nero sprung back from the unexpectedly low voice, immediately pressing Yamato forward where the figure side stepped carefully.

Behind the massive shadow before him, Nero blinked rapidly at the blurry figure at it’s side in red and black. “Easy there. You’ve been kind of out of it, man.”

Oh, that was Tim, Nero relaxed.

…Wait.

That was Tim.

Scowling, Nero pushed further away, slapping a hand offered to get him up, choosing to brace himself against a nearby wall instead. There was shuffling out of the corner of his eye and Nero found Damian hovering.

“Your face stopped bleeding.”

Was that supposed to be some sort of apology? “Great observation. Where’s Dante?”

Nero brushed aside the small talk to address the shadowed figure that his eyes now focused on and saw as Batman.

“Nero, you’ve just been introduced a very potent and new strain for fear toxin made by Scarecrow. Although I administered a antidote based on the previous strain, there’s still a lot we don’t know about your unique physiology.”

And Nero began to remembered the distrustful looks on Tim and Damian’s face after finding out the whole part-demon thing then too.

“You guys knew about that.” It wasn’t a question, really. He knew that they knew what he was trying to say here.

This time, Tim spoke up, looking faintly uncomfortable. “I wasn’t sure about your intentions, I’m still not. But DNA samples are standard workup for—”

“For random people you’ve never met? To the guy who just spent hours with you and your brother in some rank hole fighting demons with you? Saving your life?”

“Oh, like you didn’t almost make me a pancake for every time you did ‘save me’—”

“Whatever, man.”

Cutting in Batman took hold of the conversation again. “If you’re up for it, I’d like to ask you some questions about Dante.”

Remembering the line of accusations that Tim had spewed before everything went to shit came flooding back.

“No, Dante didn’t come here to kidnap people and turn them in science experiments. No, he wouldn’t attack some random teenager.” Nero paused, glaring at Tim who very carefully met his gaze equally and did not shrink back. “Well, not if they didn’t deserve it.”

Tim glared back, and turned away. Nero could only turn back to Batman. “Wasn’t this Red Hood guy some crime lord?”

Nero’s prodding elicited dark looks from all three of the vigilantes in the room. “Oh, we got real quiet now, huh.”

Batman blew past what Nero thought was a very good point that made him a hypocritical jackass— “Despite that, I don’t allow unknowns to enter my city and enact justice however they see fit. I’m not sure if you knew what Dante came here to do, but killing Rogues, killing people, isn’t something—”

Holy shit, was he being lectured right now? Nero groaned aloud, physically shaking the stifling feeling being in Batman’s vicinity gave him. There was an excess energy in his legs that just wouldn’t stop shaking him—

Getting up to create distance, he spoke over the volume of Batman’s lecture and paced.

“No, isn’t Batman supposed to defend the innocent? Well, guess what— truth is, Dante didn’t kidnap your stupid fucking son, alright? He’s never been to Gotham, much less have interacted with anyone from the hero scene.”

The tone he received in return made Nero nearly apoplectic. “I understand how confusing this must be, Nero—”

Nero stopped his pacing to reel on the man. “Oh, cut the victim talk bullshit! What aren’t you people still telling me?”

The slits of Batman’s cowl narrowed, the only hint of white amidst his shadow. In one move, he drew to his full height and Nero fought the instinct to bolt or run forward, Yamato first.

“…You want truth? Facts? What we have is this,” Batman spoke low and careful. “Dante’s DNA was a 99.99% match to a sample found belonging to a white haired man who we believe Red Hood was taken by a month ago.”

“White hair isn’t exactly an extinct hairstyle—”

“Earlier today,” the vigilante’s tone rose, “Red Robin witnessed that same man kill someone point blank for their crimes. Another round of genetic testing proved the same culprit.”

Shit.

Honestly? Nero was tired. Nero was tired, and he wanted to go home but home was Kyrie and Fortuna and Fortuna didn’t want him back and so Dante was the only real thing he could find in all this mess and despite the months since the man had imploded his life spectacularly, he was still doing the same shit even now.

“I understand that you were misled to believe your father had the same noble goals you seem to have protecting people—”

Nero had to get in the man’s face for that one, even if the world was swaying and his shadows were still a bit too ominous and long—

“He is not my father.”

Immediately, Batman raised his hands in defeat, his voice soft and placid plastic Nero was all too familiar with. “Alright. He’s not.”

Laughing slightly, he leveled a serious look at the man who Nero could now definitely say for certain was pure human. If he didn’t hold back, he could probably take the guy. “Don’t do that.”

Instead of matching his raised, cold tone, Batman stayed frustratingly calm while Nero practically buzzed from the very tips of his hair down to his toes. His fingers were numb, probably from laying down dong jackshit for who knows how long while Dante was fuck knows where. Why was his heart beating so fast?

“What am I doing, Nero?”

“You’ve got that voice on, the one nurses have when they say your arm is fine! Or— or the nuns at the orphanage telling you maybe next year—”

Nero coughed, heaving and dry. He slapped a hand over his mouth, a familiar sensation of vomiting in the back of his throat. Then he registered what he’d just blabbed. “…What the fuck was in that gas?”

“I told you, Scarecrow seemed to have prepared for Dante’s arrival. You should stay with Red Robin and Robin to recover from the remaining fear toxin you still seem to be under. Besides the obvious effect, it’s been known to prey on vulnerabilities to make people irrational and emotionally volatile.”

Oh fuck this guy, Nero was the only logical person in this entire goddamn room. If they wanted a scapegoat, they should go to a fucking zoo.

Nero ignored the obvious ploy that it was. Batman didn’t give a shit what happened to Dante, why should Nero be around him, trusting whatever he says?

He definitely wasn’t about to begin looking towards the corner where he knew Damian and Tim stood, not when it was so obvious that they didn’t trust him and he couldn’t reciprocate either.

Instead, he tried to find the most logical train of thought he could. Some sort of explanation of why Dante might’ve done what he did— what they said he did. “Trish— Dante’s friend, you know she can shapeshift? For all you guys know—”

“Nero, we’ve accounted for instances such as that. We’ve corroborated that the blood changes back to it’s original sequence after an allotted time. Sequencing is not so dissimilar to when we compared human-alien hybrids—”

“Well, we’re not aliens, are we? Tim should know a lot more about that, you should ask him.” Yamato became hot and vicious in his hand, the way it always did when it smelt Nero’s bloodlust in the air. “And I really don’t wanna hear from the guys who just watched Dante go off on his own to fuck knows where—”

“How well do you know Dante, Nero?” The guy kept going on and Nero tried hard for the words to flow off his back. “What are his goals? Do you know what he’s done beyond the time you met in Fortuna? Why does he let you keep that sword?”

Nero felt strange, floating as the barrage of questions ran through his mind without answers.

“Do you know what secrets he’s kept from you?”

At that, Nero couldn’t stop himself from lashing out.

“He hasn’t kept anything from me!” Yamato shot forth, cutting a pocket of space in the air where Batman had once stood, the man already having moved out of the way like he’d already seen it. Stepping forward with Yamato now drawn, Nero stalked forward ready to show him what Dante did show him— when Tim got in the way.

Facing towards Nero, with his bo at the ready, he tilted his head back slightly to talk to the man behind him instead of his front. “B, that’s enough. We need to focus on the victims they’re keeping in the cells in the other room. We’re going to need magic users to get started on those runes on the bars. The rest of it… it can be handled later.”

Tim looked him up and down, before turning and beginning to walk away. “He obviously doesn’t know anything about Dante.”

Doesn’t know… didn’t know? Who was Red Robin to tell him what he knew? Disbelief sent red rage he knew he was barely able to contain fluttering on the hairs of his arm like an electric charge.

In silence, he pretended to acquiesce, as though still shaken and deep in thought. When Batman broke from their group with a nod, he headed towards the room with the cells, speaking softly to someone Nero could hear faintly over the comm in his ear canal.

When he was sure the man was gone, he began to stray away from the Bats, turning to descend further underground and ignoring Tim and Damian’s calls from behind him.

If Nero apparently didn’t know anything about Dante, about his own goddamn life— then he’d go find the bastard and drag the truth from him himself.

---

Nero knew it wasn’t his smartest move attacking the Batman of all people.

A human Dark Knight who solely fought gods and monsters with nothing but his wits and what his hands could make was exactly the sort of guy Nero could imagine himself getting behind as a tinkerer and lover of auto mechanics.

The admiration had quickly faded as the man’s persona had proved to be more brooding detective.

It was fine. Nero might not be some world class detective, but it wasn’t exactly rocket science to know exactly where Ra’s was heading for. He assumed everyone did with the amount of energy that rumbled beneath their feet like a volcano and the previously dormant bioluminescent roots beginning to pulsed and writhe in one direction like a demonic version of a plane’s taxiway. One way trip to hell everybody, step right up!

Nero scoffed, sure, every cell in his body told him to run in the opposite direction of the flashing lights, but unfortunately some dumbass decided to run off on his own.

As petty and nonsensical as it was… Nero blamed Batman.

Making his way down the stretch of tunnel, a presence soon crowded the space behind his back. Swinging Yamato around first and asking questions later, he barely stopped the sword’s edge inches from Tim’s— no, Red Robin’s face.

He didn’t bother sheathing Yamato and promptly turned around to continue walking in the direction the hell affected roots were winding towards.

“Nero.”

“I do not want to talk to you right now, man.”

Nero kept following the trail of roots walking further back towards what was looking to be the main room where none of them hadn’t entered yet.

“Nero, perhaps we should come up with a method to enter without being seen—” From Tim’s side, Damian made himself known interjecting himself between the two of them.

Nero stopped his walk abruptly, looking back. “No, if you two are gonna follow my ass, we’re doing this my way.”

The pair frozen, speaking to eachother with eyes. The silence continued when Nero began to walk again, only the distant tinny sound of Batman echoing from both of the devices in their ears, which they ignored. Nero would’ve been endeared by the idea of backup before the two of them had gone totally ballistic over him and Dante and whatever he’d done to that Red Hood guy.

Whatever, it didn’t matter. Follow him, don’t— Nero was doing one thing only and that was finding Dante and kicking the truth from his mouth.

The universe’s consolation prize was that following Dante was easy. All one needed to do was trace the path of destruction that trailed behind him like breadcrumbs.

Deep groves in the ground, gnarled handprint shaped holes in the tunnel walls like someone had dragged their feet and bumped against the walls, staggering. Only the wall wasn’t paper and the only person Nero knew that could put grooves in solid stone and tightly packed earth in Gotham at the moment was himself and Dante.

When they reached what Nero had assumed was the main enterance to the lab or dungeon or whatever a lair that belonged to a guy named Scarecrow had looked like, it had been swarmed.

Before, he and Damian had turned away in lieu of finding another way in when they’d heard Tim down one of the more abandoned hallways. That was because the tunnel had widened into a chamber crawling with Scarecrow goons working in assembly lines by the dozens.

Where the rustling of packaging and clinking glass vials of LZ-V had filled the room, now they all could walk through as long tables of supplies were abandoned.

The stacked pallets of the glowing compound he’d known were in tte corner of that room were gone and Nero had a horrible feeling the city above them were in for something terrifyingly rotten. It almost made him turn back towards Tim and Damian, wondering if they should warn Batman of the shipment and its impending chaos when an echo of voices came distantly from a passage way leading into another section of the underground system.

Nero’s eyes immediately went upwards where an opening in the stone connected to an industrial catwalk leading across the current room and into the next. Wordlessly, Tim and Damian met his gaze and they all began to scale the height, creeping in the shadowed ceilings until the large open view of a massive cave below.

“Look, the kid had a crazy grip. We were lucky that he totally went ballistic on the older guy and made him drop it before he ran off losing his shit.” Nero had what? He had no time to attempt to remember what had happened after that gas had filled the room. Looking down his eyes landed on the owner of the rasping voice, Scarecrow, with the Rebellion in his hands.

“Honestly, one should be enough. I don’t know what you’re so—”

Ra’s al Ghul’s expression was thunderous as he snatched the greatsword from his hands. “The Yamato can sever worlds, you fool! It has potential to separate the demonic and human aspects of any being, what do you think will happen to the hybrids you and Pyg created? Weeks of work, gone.”

Yamato seethed in its scabbard over his shoulder so much so that Nero made to quietly dispel it. If Ra's needed Yamato so bad, it would do him no good to bring it to the man's front door. If he tried to take it, at least he'd have to cut Nero's arm off first.

Ra's voice decended into a whisper. “Do you understand why we need Yamato as well? Having Rebellion won’t matter if what it can do can just as easily be undone.”

Then, as though struck across the back of his head, Ra’s al Ghul batted one hand over his shoulder towards the exit of the cave. “Leave.”

A moment of absolute silence sat heavy in the cave. “Leave? You came to me, I’d been doing this ever since Wayne sold off all the Arkham properties. I’m running this operation—”

Ra’s al Ghul rounded on Scarecrow, with his height fully straightened, he cut an imposing figure that loomed well over Scarecrow’s own head. Rebellion was held outwards to Scarecrow's neck. A sharp inhale came from both Damian and Tim at his sides. “No, that is the silly little idea I put in your head to have your little troupe do what I needed you. It was one thing to find you and your cause grating. It is another when you are actively becoming the problem that I sent you to fix. I do not entertain incompetence.”

He then composed himself, stepping back to smooth the lush green robes that draped over him with a grimace. “It is a professional courtesy that I offer you now. Remove yourself from my gaze or I will dispose of you myself.”

When Scarecrow scrabbled towards the exit, the three of them stood holding their breaths as they huddled above the man. It felt as though he'd been standing for years until Ra's began to walk out from the room in Scarecrow's opposite direction, though not before trailing his fingers over the massive pillar in the middle of the room. 

And there, suspended in what looked to be a massive glass tank that had been embedded into the tree’s trunk. Attached to the canister was a tangle of clear tubing, each siphoning a bright blue-green liquid away from the chamber, branching across the walls.

Nero realized that somewhere along the way, the clear tubes filled with runoff had begun to grow over with thick bark and plant matter. The result being a twisted amalgamation of biological components and machinery.

Along the walls, spigots lined the roots of the tree— each pouring into vials a familiar blue-green substance they’d oozing from hybrids. Though now Nero was taking a proper look at where the roots and vines had originated from… didn’t this more look like the trunk of a tree than it’s roots?

A tall tower of gnarled wood spiraled from the ground where at it’s base lay the largest pool of Lazarus water Nero had ever seen. Almost as if coming from it’s depths.

To make matters worse, being underground made the earthquakes easier to feel and every small rumble near or far, Nero could see another branch from the tree blossom and begin to burrow upwards to where Nero knew the city was. Either that or they turned further underground around the pool of green that was beginning to burn away the edges around it, expanding. Gnarled bony hands of pure demons began to pull themselves free of the goo, coming out of nowhere as thought it were a…

Deciding to speak to the pair at his side, Nero spoke faintly. “Are Lazarus Pits known to… go anywhere?”

Damian looked at him like he’d just spoke gibberish. “Though supernatural, Nero, they are still pools of water. I don’t believe they go much of anywhere—”

Nero snapped. “Well, I’m pretty sure that this Pit is sitting on some sort of Hell Gate, so.”

“Ah.”

Nero rolled his eyes, looking into the now seemingly empty chamber.

Damian crept closer over the edge they had been looking down from. Softly he spoke towards Nero and Tim. "This must be where my grandfather is getting his supply of demons. I heard stories that there was a Lazarus Pit below Gotham… though I don't recall any sort of plant that it is able to form a symbiotic relationship with its waters."

Nero turned to Tim, dread forming as he studied the spiraling sapling coming from the Pit. "You said that you'd been tracking demon sightings and earthquakes throughout Crime Alley, right?" 

Tim paled, opening a screen of data from his gauntlet. Hovering faintly over his wrist was a map of Gotham. Cluster of dots neural assumed with demon sightings followed by rings of seismic energy emanating from the areas could be seen. Tim zoomed out and noted several other areas within the city that had been hit, all seeming to lead in winding trails back towards Arkham Island.

Tim turned to him. “You think what? These earthquakes are growing pains?”

Nero shrugged. “It’s huge, on demonic Lazarus fertilizer, and growing way faster than a regular tree does. I’d be surprised if we didn’t feel anything happening with how widespread it seems to be.”

"No kidding.” Damian clucked his tongue, his eyebrows furrowed together. “At this rate, I think it may be under the entire city soon." 

"Anybody wanna guess what happens if it breaks to the surface?” Tim offered.

Nero answered back. “How good are you at swimming?”

The sigh that came from Damian was full of tired suffering. “I really don’t think it’ll be the sort of water you can tread.”

Sick of waiting around, Nero gave the chamber below another cursory glance before he vaulted down, his feet landing on the ground. He looked over his shoulder where Tim and Damian looked constipated as Nero shot a salute back up at them.

If Yamato was able to sever the connection between worlds… Nero looked down at his Devil Bringer and towards the budding sapling curling out from the Lazarus Pits. The odd glass chamber it had in it’s core had to be Ra’s work, Nero wasn’t sure what LZ-V had originated from to be so potent as it mixed with Lazarus water but he wasn’t going to stand around and wait to find out. Unlike Tim, he really didn’t have any interest in the abomination of science and alchemy that had taken place here. He’d had enough of it on Fortuna as it was to be endeared by it in anyway.

Pulling his fist back to shatter the core of the tree’s ominous glowing truck, he froze when his eyes caught a figure suspended in it’s waters.

Dante was thin.

Nero had never seen what a Lazarus Pit could do to a human first hand, much less someone who was also half demon. But the way the liquid he floated on in the chamber of glass surged around him as though comforting him and harvesting his energy at the same time, Nero knew it wasn’t good.

Raising Yamato in his hand, the memory of Dante teaching him the forms to use Yamato in startling clear definition. Maybe it was the panic, maybe it was the heady determination to get answer from the man before him, both anger and care coalescing into something Nero could not help but be a devotee to.

“Wait! Nero, even if Dante had just been taken…”

Nero was done listening to whatever Tim had to say.

Yamato had always been a vocal blade. The katana was exacting and perpetually hungry for something Nero wasn’t sure even existed. Slaying demons quieted it’s humming most days but still, there was an ever present poke of dissatisfaction with every swing and ever form he practiced.

Now? Yamato sang.

Where before Nero had been subject to noisy, discordant strikes through air, the slash Nero made down the center of the tube was hush still. There was barely a sign of displacement in the air. Like thunder, only a lightning flash of the edge of steel before a cacophonous noise of shattering glass rang through the air like a funeral bell.

When the tide of Lazarus water finally drained from the space, and Dante began to fall from his height, Nero dispelled Yamato despite its urges and rushed forward. Ignoring the hiss of the toxic liquid now being soaked into the earth around the tree trunk, Tim began slowly backing away from where Nero knelt on the ground holding Dante’s unconscious body up.

“If this chemical is what has been making those hybrids since people have been going missing, something that’s been happening even before you both arrived, how is it that LZ-V was manufactured before he even stepped foot in the city?”

In Nero’s silence, he tried again, more urgent this time. “Nero, for him to have been placed there, he had to be gravely injured to survive even touching the Pit. I’m talking near dead. And just look at him, Nero, he’s basically starving! Did Dante look like that at all before he left—?”

Nero snapped. “No. Who knows, maybe he got captured trying to face Ra’s alone. Maybe he—”

And then Nero couldn’t breathe.

“Dante?”

Blinking away abrupt tears, he realized that he was suddenly on his back, looking up at the caves high ceilings. Vertigo hit him hard, everything more a blur of motion, pain and color.

Nero instinctively clawed at his neck, there was a weight, a restriction. He blindly reached out digging his fingers into the shadow above him holding him down. There was a dulled sound of pain from above him when he pushed his fingernails into soft tissue and it loosened the tug around his neck.

The force readjusted and Nero was shifted back into the light, along with the grip on his neck. In the dim glow from the Lazarus tubes, Dante looked down at him blankly, eyes dilated so far Nero could barely find the blue iris— wait, green—?

Behind the large void of dilated black, all Nero saw reflected in them was his own struggling face, not a single trace of care or recognition in his eyes.

Dante, you asshole! It’s me!

He gave up clawing for the hands around his neck and instead dug his fingers into the rock beneath him trying to find the sharp metallic object digging into his ribs under his back.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! Where—?

Black dots swarmed before him and his fingers got cold and clumsy before a sudden gust of air filled his lungs.

“W-what?”

Behind the dark mass that was Dante’s bulky figure, Tim and Damian stood defiant. A thin line of blood trailed down Dante’s face where he made out Tim’s bo staff brandished in a mid swing, Nero became aware of Damian’s ill timed cut when Dante immediately shifted gears to catch the tip of his katana in his other hand. The small edge of panic on Damian’s face jolted Nero into action.

Now free and barely lucid, he pulled the Blue Rose from where it had been pinned under him and set off a ricochet reaction between one of Dante’s ribs. The sound of twins bullets burrowing into flesh point blank sickened him, especially when Dante let out an almost inhuman wail and staggered away, Damian’s katana with him, pulled in his hands.

Nero sat up, heaving breaths uncontrollably running away from him and he barely felt the pressure under his arms as Tim and Damian pulled him up.

“What the fuck is wrong with him? He almost killed me!”

“The Pit—” Tim began before trailing off, face still as stone. Nero could see in his eyes he was working out some puzzle he had no privy to. “But Nero… I don’t think this is Dante.”

There was an odd sense of recognition in Dante— in the man’s face, it was obvious even through the long Lazarus wet drape of hair that crowded over his face. The hand the man kept clawed over his side reached for the hilt end of Damian’s blade. Like a starved man seeing the sun for the first time after a life in a cave.

Eyes blurry and unfocused, the man’s voice croaked, waterlogged and ruined with disuse.

“Yamato.”

Nero didn’t realize he’d stepped forward again until he felt Damian block his path and he stumbled. Steadying himself, he felt the named blade pulse within his Devil Bringer. Belatedly, he realized it was less Nero himself that was gravitating to the imposter but something other. Something bone deep that spoke of promised blood and shared violence. Yamato didn’t so much hum in this man’s presence as it did scream.

Between them, it burned bright blue, a steady thrum of energy— a tide, no, a heartbeat.

Where before Nero felt nothing as he tugged on the end of the demonic power that had always surrounded Yamato, he felt as though some old grave had just been unearthed and Nero was standing there with a shovel feeling wrong.

“Who the fuck are you then? How do you know that name?”

In his tunnel vision, Nero hadn’t addressed a damn thing beyond the man before him. Looking closer, reaching out and actually feeling, Nero knew he looked like Dante, but felt like he was someone— something completely different. The man had his same strength and radiated with demonic energy, but Yamato had never sang to Dante the way it now.

This wasn’t remaining fear gas, was it?

The man didn’t answer him, simply gripping the hilt of Damian’s sword hard enough that Nero was convinced it would shatter in his hands. The look Nero received was beyond hatred, the impostor’s vivid green eyes boiled over and began stalking toward him.

“Shit.” Tim’s voice from his side pulled him from his focus, although he kept the Dante impostor in his sights, looking over towards the entrance he could see the familiar glint of red armor dragging a massive mace behind it. Damian hissed, pulling twin R-shaped blades from his belt, spinning them edge down and the two birds turned to face Rosso Angelo.

Nero was on his own.

Split between the knight and the impostor before him, Nero began to feel impossibly stupid. He didn’t have any time to regret barging in here beyond that because Damian’s stolen blade cut straight down towards his head and Nero was force to bring his Devil Bringer up to parry it.

Despite probably being able to cut through human flesh and bone, Damian’s very human blade did nothing but screech dangerously as the edge wobbled on Nero’s tough, scaled arm.

By now, his coat was in tatters from stopping blows with it, the proof of his demonic heritage not limited to a hand he could stuff in his pocket or wrap bandages or gloves on. Not that it mattered anymore, it seemed the cat had been out of the bag for everyone except for Nero.

Despite his anger with Dante, he could obviously tell the man wasn’t in his right mind and even though Yamato was a siren in his head screaming to drawmedrawmedrawme, Nero wouldn’t listen. Because as much as he furious with the man at the moment, he might be, he could be his—

Nero stumbled, attempting to get his scrambled mind in order to face a Dante who seemed to not be holding back anymore. But before he could steel his will to even begin drawing the Blue Rose again, the same hands that had nearly broke his neck just minutes before curled just below his elbow.

A band of iron strong fingers dug into the soft flesh of his skin and instinct told him to kick and run like some prey animal might have.

Being part demon meant that as a child, he’d never gotten sick, never had a cut last longer than a minute, hadn’t bruised long enough for those raw patches of skin to stay one color—

He never broke an arm either. Not from jumping off swings, not from race sliding down stair rails with Kyrie or stealing Credo’s skateboard when he’d had that rebellious streak.

The sharp, blinding white that fills his vision when Dante starts pulling sends Nero into a dreamy sort of state where at some point the sheer agony that had cut its knife straight down his right arm sort of floats away…

And in an instant, everything he felt disappears.

“Dante.” The owner of the voice who had just been above him sounded further away and Nero realized the weight on his body gone. He was also... saying his own name? Nero tried to get up but putting weight on his right arm sent him straight back to the ground, attempting to open his eyes to look at it, a little voice of paranoia whispered in his ear that he shouldn’t.

Instead, he blearily blinked across the way where Dante stood pacing back and forth, his eyes still a vivid verdant glow rivaling the Pits. And then above him… was also Dante?

Nero sighed, slumping. “Can we call a truce? I think I gotta concussion… ‘Mm seeing double.”

Dante reached out and Nero couldn’t help the wince that shot through his body like a bullet. Face falling, Nice Dante tried for a smile that Nero could tell was him trying not to freak him out. Oh, fuck, his arm was gone, wasn’t it? “Hey, kid. You did good. Sorry, it took a while to get my shit together.”

“F-Fuck you.” Nero manages to stutter out between his shivering for some reason. The whole room suddenly felt real cold. “You ass, I came for you and you took my fucking arm off.”

Dante’s strangled smile fell and he shook his head. “Two arms, two legs, and ten toes. Unless you grew more limbs since I’ve been gone.”

Nero finally had the courage to look down at his right side, disbelief flooding him when he saw that his arm was still there, if crooked and bloodied in an ugly way that it hadn’t even began to look like when he’d injured it and developed the demonic arm the first time.

“Take a nap, kid. I’ll handle the rest of this.”

A blotchy black begins to eat away his peripherals, like the an old film coming to end, empty spaces where the picture had burned away. Nero tried to fight the darkness, but his throat ached and getting air down it seemed like a greater task each time.

“Think you can lend me Yamato for a bit?”

Nero didn’t really recall manifesting the blade, but he blinked and suddenly he was watching Dante stepping forward to block Nero’s view from his clone in front of them. In his hands, Yamato burned icy blue in the dimness of the cave. “Ra’s… that ancient asshole. He totally had me thinking he wanted Yamato to split worlds apart, didn’t he?”

“I guess a little Rebellion was just what he needed huh? Maybe you do too, Vergil.” Dante called out to the man before him. In turn, he seemed to sharpen, a flicker of recognition that straightened his posture, that made him hold Damian’s stolen blade more like the weapon it was than a club. “It’s time to wake up, man. Once you get your head together, you’re gonna be real embarrassed.”

Before Nero succumbed, his head flopped to the side watching the blurry figures of Dante and… Vergil? Dreamily, he stared as they circled each other like binary suns. At the angle his head rested, the ceiling tipped and stuck to the ground like bats, defying gravity. “Long time no see, brother.”

The second they clashed, nothing beyond a haze of blue heat and a red blaze, could be seen.

Nero didn’t remember much beyond that before everything went black.

---

Usually, this is where Tim would could cut his losses, gather what information he had and restructure a plan of attack for the future. Planning to the future meant staying alive though and Tim was having an absolute horrible time attempting to, well, not die a brutal, ugly death.

Rosso Angelo was an absolutely terrifying, bitchy menace who turned his head to mockingly stare down Tim like he hadn’t just batted Damian away like he weighed nothing.

He couldn’t even begin to wonder if he was okay or not before the Fallen Angel descended upon him, swinging a wide arc above his head. Dropping low into an almost split, he used his momentum to swing himself between the angels legs, sliding to a stop behind him where he picked his bo back up.

Tim tucked away the instinctive panic at almost being decapitated, muscle memory pulling more from his time as Robin than anything.

All he could do was was dodge for the time being, all the explosives he’d had on him having been used to blow Scarecrow’s hybrids and the Lazarus demons sky high. He’d snatched a few leftover canisters from the tables where the abandoned assembly line lay, but when he’d taken a good look at it, it proved to be no explosive and instead a container for the new fear toxin Scarecrow had created.

Tim did not want to find out how the new strain felt if it made Nero and his family freak out in that way. Really, Ra’s and Scarecrow must’ve had plans to lure the trio here for a while if they had created something that would be partially ineffective on humans while part-demons like them and probably hybrids alike were—

Tim froze, staring at Rosso Angelo draw closer.

Oh, the fear gas had been especially potent for hybrids hadn’t it?

Energized by the new plan, Tim pushed forward, half hearted scrambling and dodging revving into a sprint. He sped towards the direction, he’d seen Damian go flying in, assuming the kid would’ve gotten up, assess he was outmatched and retreated to where Tim could later regroup with him.

If Tim was right, this new version of Scarecrow’s fear gas utilized demonic essence to specifically target Nero and Dante who had human and demonic descent, wouldn’t it technically work on Rosso Angelo, who Tim was certain was some form of hybrid as well?

Tim skidded behind the boulder he was pretty sure he saw the top of Damian’s curled hair spiked up from.

“Damian. Do you remember last Christmas—”

Whipping his head around to where he’d sprung up from, Damian squeaked. Tim wished he had the time to bully him about it but restrained himself for later. “Timothy! This is hardly the time to be reminiscing, we will not be dying here today—”

“No, idiot, listen! The prank we pulled on Jason, remember?”

Damian’s expression looked incredulous. “You do not seriously think a creature originating from Hell would fall for such an obvious ploy?”

“No, I think a dumbass who taunts people while getting his ass kicked and stops you from falling when you piggyback and stab him him would.”

There was a moment of silence before Damian’s hopeful ragged voice spoke barely over a whisper. “You better be right about this, Drake.”

Tim hoped he was too. Instead of rattling of the whopping 60% chance that he wasn’t, Tim shoved the canister of fear gas into Damian’s hands until Rosso Angelo came surging towards the boulder they crouched behind.

Although made out of a ceramic coated magnesium alloy, his staff only skittered off the angel’s armor metal on metal, sparking before uselessly scratching away nothing but paint. It didn’t matter because Tim wasn’t aiming to brute force knock the devil’s lights out, he wanted to knock piece from it’s armor off.

Sliding the edge of his bo under a dented notch he’d been hammering away at on the knight’s visor, with one quick thrust upwards, Rosso Angelo’s helmet went flying off where Damian was waiting to catch it.

The knight looked backwards just in time for Damian to tuck the small canister of aerosol into the lining of it’s visor. Hiding a gun shaped tool behind his waist in his belt.

Looking like a kid holding a bowling ball too heavy for him in his arms, Damian heaved the helmet in an underhand toss back over towards Tim. The pass was short, like Damian hadn’t had the strength to send it flying over Rosso Angelo’s head like Tim did. And in a quick movement, the demon knight snatched it from the air.

The knight backed away, curling downwards to hide its face as it pushed the helmet back over its head.

Hook, line, and sinker. Tim was a genius.

And then a high pitch hissing noise came from inside it’s visor. Before it realized what was happening, a thick plume of purple gas began seeping from the slits in the angel’s visor. Futilely, it stumbked back, flapping it’s wings as though it could fan away the gas canister that was stuck to the inside of his helmet. Realizing that the gas was coming from within rather than something outside it’s armor, Rosso Angelo started yanking at the helmet on it’s face only to realize it was stuck.

Damian twirled a mini gun of hardening gel on his hand, hand on his waist before sheathing it in his belt. It was such a Jason thing to do that Tim started laughing loudly,

It wasn’t superglue and a stink bomb, but Tim thought it came at a close second. Oh, how he loved that Christmas.

“Fool me once, fool me twice…” Tim sighed, twirling his bo over his shoulders and arcing both his arms over it to hang. “You know, I still think that was one of our best. Don’t think any other prank will top it.”

Surprisingly, Damian leaned slightly toward his side. “Hm. You do have your moments.”

THUMP.

The menacing presence behind them was easy to deduct, as both he and Damian’s shoulders went up to their ears.

Turning around to find Bruce darkly observing the drugged angel demon before them and what sounded like Dante and Nero finishing up their own fight in the background, Tim attempted for something lighthearted.

“Hey, B. Fancy seeing you here!”

It landed poorly. Bruce didn't acknowledge the greeting and immediately went straight into it. “After making that long distance call to Zatanna to cut their mission short, I return from the prison to start delegating tasks. Only, do you know what I find?”

“Um.” Every single burst of self proclaimed genius left Tim within the second. Bruce— no, Batman stared deep into his soul, probably reading his mind and extracting every truth and lie he had in his head.

Damian mumbled under his breath. “…a sense of calm?”

Tim kicked his shin, regretting nothing when all their camaderie disapated as Damian elbowed him back.

Bruce glowered. “The both of you missing. Now, three of my sons gone missing after coming face to face with demons and white haired devils. So, what do you two have to report in this solo rogue mission of yours?”

Damian and Tim only had to hang their heads lowly for a moment. It was then that Dante came walking back, covered in blood.

Tim immediately startled, his body stepping forward before he could think. Damian spoke first, voicing the thought they both seemed to have. “Nero?”

"Asleep."

His sword glittered ruby red from the sheen of gore that it took Tim a moment to realize that from its narrow body and curved edge that it was Yamato he carried, not Rebellion.

Tim wasn’t sure if he should try to ask what had happened to the other— his twin.

And wasn’t that just an absolute marvel for a detective to find? Classic murder and kidnapping case, only surprise, surprise! It actually was the not so dead twin brother that was the culprit all along. Someone call Hasbro, somebody was gonna want their Clue game back.

SSSSSSCHHHKK…

Tim blinked, turning back towards where he’d left Rosso Angelo hands and paled.

Rasping, the figure of the demonic angel curled in on himself as though he couldn’t breathe and began clawing at it’s throat, whistling noises struggling to get free. Tim rushed over, kneeling down over him in a panic. “Shit, shit, shit! B do you have another dosage of that fear toxin antidote?”

Bruce came to kneel by his side just a little after Damian came barreling into his side as well. Tim wondered what sort of look they’d have to had on for Bruce to look that way. “I have one left. But for a creature of this size…”

Oh fuck, he didn’t think that through. And he’d given Damian the entire canister, what the hell was he thinking? Adrenaline highs, strokes, heart attacks, aneurysms— it was all common. The sudden and acute stress on their nervous system sometimes didn’t stop at simple panic attacks or hallucinations or regular fear responses. Some people straight up died from heavy doses of fear toxin—

“Tim, what’s wrong. Did you and Damian get dosed as well?”

And then Rosso Angelo was crowding into Batman’s arms like an oversized child. His breaths came faster and faster and Tim was starting to panic just as badly wondering how much fear toxin a demon could take before it’s heart gave out. Did demons have hearts? He meant, not to say they were unfeeling, but like, physically did they even have—

“Move.”

Dante pushed gently, Tim remembered suddenly to blink, his eyes dry from staring at the demon before him and his father who despite all his empathy did not know who this creature was.

Being pushed aside, he watched as Dante stood before the quickly hyperventilating demon before him raising the edge of Yamato backwards. In the next span of a breath, Dante had already unsheathed the sword and cut cleanly across where their father held the knight close.

Tim had to yank at Damian who immediately made to pounce on Dante, as a splitting light emanated from Rosso Angelo’s cut chest. Within the large dissection, the brightness eventually faded leaving a hand to shoot from it’s chest Alien style, mucus and gore and all. The body of the knight began to dissipate, it’s armor crumbling into dust.

“Dad?” A waterlogged voice croaked.

Tim could barely hear Bruce’s choked voice. “Jason.”

From the chest cavity of Rosso Angelo, came the mucus covered form of one missing Jason Todd. Immediately, Bruce spent no time ripping the cape from his own shoulder to wrap up the man shivering as if his bones would rattle away.

Holy fuck. Tim was right. Tim was fucking right!

Tim wondered if smoke was coming out of his ears with the shift from the terror that came from almost accidentally killing your brother and the euphoria of being right.

Dante spoke quiet yet smug. “…I think this makes us even now.”

Bruce who hadn’t said a thing beyond his son’s name since his first arrival, didn’t fuss only giving Dante a long glance before refocusing on Jason. Now that the adrenaline was dying down, even Tim was feeling like passing out next to his brother.

Dante hummed. “Nero. He’s a good kid. Reckless and stubborn as the ones you got here. Since we’re all in the same page now… he’s gonna want to follow after me again. Ra’s can’t get his hands on him or the Yamato.”

And to Tim’s surprise, Bruce gave up. If had been any other day, any other case he was sure the man would hold a grudge for the next five years before admitting he was wrong. Instead, he went beyond simply calling off his hunt for Dante. “…In the Cave. There’s a medical bay strong enough to hold Superman. Do with that what you will.”

Dante solemnly nodded before turned away towards the still form of a person further away. Nero, Tim assumed.

Damian, who’d been oddly quiet watched almost guiltily at the man’s back as he walked away to pick an unconscious Nero from the ground. He saw the want in his eyes to go over to them and check on Nero as well but looked away at the last second.

Instead, Tim had to whack Damian’s hand away when he went to poke Jason’s cheek, the man frowning almost immediately in his sleep, Abruptly, Bruce pulled away from his thoughtful stare down of Dante to go stone still when Jason stirred awake.

“Uh, what the hell is going on? Why do I feel like I just got run over by the Batmobile…” Jason made to get up and froze, pulling the cape tighter around his shoulders. “And where the fuck is my underwear.”

Chapter 7: devil's children

Notes:

hehehehe should i change those tags now? HAHAHAHA REVEALLLLL

When Nero woke, he knew exactly who Dante was to him.

He’d spent a good minute or two when he had first opened his eyes to stare across the room to where the man sat slumped with his eyes closed near the bed Nero lay. At that time, he’d taken his time cataloguing the shape of his eyebrow and chin, wondering faintly if he’d have to worry about his scruff and worry lines later in life. It was a good while later that Dante stirred, his eyes finding him immediately and tensing when he realized Nero was awake.

Nero gave Dante the chance to speak first, but when he still chose to sit quietly without a word, Nero broke.

“That man. Vergil. He’s…”

At that, Dante drags a nervous hand through his hair and in the shorter strands that fall back into place, Nero can begin to see the little details that set the two twins apart.

He knows that with age, they usually say twins begin grow apart from each other depending on their lifestyle and environment, but when Nero saw Dante all he could see was every way in which he and his father looked so much alike. It sent a lance of pain through his chest he wasn’t sure was front getting his ass kicked.

Even with the man looking so uncharacteristically ragged by his bedside, it didn’t move anything in Nero besides rage. Quietly, he turn his head to look straight back up at the ceiling, hoping a stray stalactite would fall down between the two of them and end the obvious conversation brewing in the bud.

“Tell me it’s not true.”

“Nero...”

“No!” Because the last thing Nero wanted to hear in his voice was that damning guilt. Where was the indignation? Where was the reassurances that Dante was exactly the man that he said he was, that despite his many faults, he wouldn’t be so much of a coward to say nothing to someone who had to look at his father’s face everyday not knowing a damn thing. “No, because if he’s my father— if he’s your brother and you’re my—”

Nero shook his head. “No. He’s not, because you would have told me, okay? You would have told me, Dante.”

“…It wasn’t that simple.”

“I think it really fucking is.”

When Dante scoffed, Nero could physically feeling the way his hands spasmed to reach out and his the man for his tone. “What difference would it have made?”

“Everything, and you know that!” Nero’s voice caught ragged in his throat. He wasn’t going to get upset. “Growing up, I had Kyrie and Credo. That’s it. Why wouldn’t I want to know—”

After a moment of harsh breathing, force the stuck sharp knife in the back of his throat down. Barely above a whisper Nero spoke up again. “Why would you lie?”

Dante met him at an equal tone. “I didn’t lie.”

It was Nero’s turn to scoff, disbelief pulling a bitter thing that couldnt be considered a laugh from his chest. “You didn’t say shit! What’s the difference?”

Abruptly, Dante stood up from his place at the foot of his bed, the chair he’d sat on scratching ugly across the flooring. “I’m not doing this right now.”

“And you’re going where exactly? You don’t get to just walk away like a coward after—”

“Just stay here. It’ll be safer finding Vergil and Ra’s when I don’t have to think about you in the way—”

“In the way?” Now wasn’t that hilarious— Dante was just asking to get hit. Nero laughed, already grabbing his coat from where it had been folded neatly nearby by someone. “What do you mean stay here? Fuck that, I’m going.”

“He’s not in his right mind, Nero. This isn’t a fight to get involved in—”

“Well, he’s my father isn’t he? Doesn’t that make it our issue now?”

A strangled noise left Dante lashing out and arm at the infirmary around them with it’s sterile white bedding and array of medical equipment. “Look what he almost did to you— what he already did!”

“Like you and I didn’t exchange a little ass kicking on Fortuna.” He kicked off the thin sheet covering his legs and went for the IV line that went into his wrist, yanking harshly and biting down a wince at the fresh blood that surfaced and just as quickly scabbed over.

“Well, I obviously wasn’t trying to kill you.”

“Yeah, right. So what? You were playing with me? Going easy on me?”

Dante grabbed Nero’s arm, his right arm, the one still aching at its joint after nearly being torn from his body. Nero grabbed Dante’s hand back, half furious when he couldn’t move it and that Dante basically reminding him he got the kiddie gloves treatment when they first met— and half terrified out of his mind, the remaining fear gas and medicine and panic of his body screaming to push away the man with the face who’d just tried to strangle him hours ago.

“You’re not my father. Actually, you've made it perfectly clear I’m not anything to you—”

“Like I go around taking random kids for joyrides across the city to go demon hunting?”

“You do when they’re ‘backup’. When you blow up their life and don’t look back. You do when you’re obligated and you feel guilty—”

“You’re everything to me!” Dante snapped back, getting in Nero’s face. He forced himself to stay stone still at the sudden thunderous timber of his voice, pretending the furious look on the man’s face didn’t want to make him curl away.

“Fuck. Fuck! You think I wanna bury another family? You think I wanna watch a dumb kid playing hero get killed?”

Dante shook his head, hands hiding his face as he wiped down it. “So you know what? You’re right. I didn’t want to tell you anything because I don’t want you near me, near any of this. If it were up to me you’d stay stuck on that damn cult of an island the rest of your life never knowing a damn thing.”

Quieter, as though only to himself he whispered. “…Why couldn’t you have stayed away?”

Nero snarled at his feet, refusing to look Dante in the eye. “Yeah, us never meeting would’ve made life a hell of a lot easier, wouldn’t it.”

The scoff that followed made Nero want to punch the guy in the throat. Dante was pained when he spoke back, like Nero was the one doing the hurting here. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

Laughing, he shot back. “Then how did you mean it, Dante? ‘Cuz I’m getting sick and tired of having to read your mind.”

When Dante didn’t say a thing for a long time, Nero felt vindicated and simultaneously disappointed that the man had given up so quickly. He knew the man could clam up, he knew he hated anything having to do with the matters of the heart, more of a sort of guy that shot at it first and aimed a crappy one liner at it later.

Abruptly, like Dante couldn’t stand to be in the cave any longer, the man stood and began walking away. When Dante passed the threshold of the room’s entrance and exit, Nero called to his back and broke the silence.

“What exactly are you going to do?” For a moment, Nero was sure he’d just keep on walking without a look back. Dante’s voice was soft when he spoke.

“End this. Like it should’ve ended the last time we…” Dante shook his head before looking over his shoulder at Nero. He made his way closer to the doorframe that led into the room, leaning on the wall there and patting the threshold. “Batman lent me the place to let you recover. Said it could hold Superman actually, ain't that pretty neat, hm?”

A sense of foreboding had Nero standing straight up on his feet pushing through vertigo, but Dante had already reached out to the other side of the door hitting a button panel that slid the only opening to the glass room shut.

“Dante, you sonuvabitch—” Nero stumbled to the door, grasping at a handle that didn’t exist. Every inch of the wall was a smooth see through material and even where the door and the wall met, there seemed to be no grooves or edges he could pull or hanging onto.

Dante tutted, waving over his shoulder and slowly making his way down from the stairs leading up to the infirmary-turned-prison. “Hey, your grandma was a nice lady, young man—”

Nero kicked the bottom of the door as hard as he could, ending up on his ass when all the energy went straight back to him. Clutching his foot, he screamed at the man’s retreating coward ass, that, “—fuckin’ bastard!”

“—and she was married to my dad, so if anyone’s the bastard, I actually think that’d be you.” Dante stood at the bottom of the platform now, making his way over to a wall where a row of hooks and keys hung from the beginnings of a garage. Swinging a key ring around his finger and snatching it midair, he made his way to the rows of bikes lined up next to the cave’s road exit.

Despite basically kicking Nero’s ass to the curb once again, he seemed delighted to be grabbing the handle of what looked to be some matte black Kawasaki that had been cannibalized by modifications. Dante sent him one of those shit eating grins. “Sorry, kid. Never knew your mom but I’m pretty sure my brother’s never had a girlfriend in his entire life, much less a wife. ”

Manifesting his Devil Bringer’s metaphysical form, Nero commanded the ghostly blue light to snatched the door in front of him off his hinges but as soon as it got close to the walls, it evaporated like water, steaming off into the air. Enraged, he punched the middle of the door again futilely, something sharp at the back of his throat and eyes.

“Look. Bruce and I have something of an understanding now. We’ll handle what’s below and you and the rest of the tots can help Lady and Trish out with the low level demon clean up here on the surface, okay? All this will be over soon and you won’t have anything to worry about beyond car engine swords and that girlfriend of yours. So just… stay out of this, kid.”

With that, Dante swung a leg over the seat of the bike and sped off into the night without a single look back.

---

After a minute of aimless cursing and throwing objects at the clear, see through walls of the Bat’s infirmary prison, Nero slumped on the ground breathing so hard it was the only this that echoed off the cave’s wide walls.

His intermission before getting back up to try again was interrupted by a slow clap coming from across the cave. At the raised level, the glass walled room was at, Nero could see directly across to the metal catwalk where a man leaned on the railing watching him intently.

“Congrats on the dad thing, man. Blows you guys tried to kill each other. Points for drama, though I probably could’ve done better.”

“I’m sorry, who the fuck are you?” Nero’s immediate thoughts left his mouth, anger and adrenaline still on the surface of his mind. But backtracking and seeing as the man before him was out of a cell and Nero was in not, he immediately leapt at the chance before him. “Can you open this thing?”

“One, that is definitely not how you ask for something. Two, also rude— don’t you see the resemblance?”

Nero stared blankly at man that was maybe a little less than a decade older than he was. There was an odd white streak of pale white hair at his fringe but he and the man’s familiarities stopped there as the rest of his head was a mess of pitch black curls. Nero said nothing, more wishing the guy could come closer to open the door rather than make introductions.

Sighing, the man made a batting gesture, as if he was hitting a home run with something really heavy before giving up and making flapping wing motions. “Demon angel? Tried to murder you? Is this not ringing a bell? Maybe we should test you for a concussion, part-demons get concussions, right?”

Ah. “Rosso Angelo.”

The man snapped his fingers and pointed to Nero. “Bingo! But also no. Real name’s Jason. Ra’s probably got the whole ‘rosso’ thing from the night life. For a so called ‘genius mastermind’, he’s not the most creative guy, I’ll tell you that much.”

At what Nero felt was a pretty dead expression on his face, Jason pressed on, seemingly getting a kick out of his turmoil. He began walking across the catwalk connected to the room Nero was in and the stairs down.

As if he were giving a college lecture, Jason spoke as he made his way to the paneling where Dante had been before he fucked off. “The Italian word for ‘red’ is ‘rosso’. Pretty sure the syntax is supposed to be angelo rosso, not Rosso Angelo but what do I know? Also I got no idea where he got the whole angel vibe from. Think I might be more devil than you and your folks are. You might also know me as Red Hood so…”

“You’re the guy my—” Nero wondered what to call that man. Father? Vergil? Dad? Putting it out of his mind, Nero pressed on. “You’re the criminal guy he took back to Ra’s.”

“A bit more than your everyday ‘criminal guy’ but yeah, that’s me.” The man’s face turned contemplative and serious, and Nero started to feel like he wasn’t being looked at as much as he was being looked through.

“The guy seemed real out of it when I found him in the Alley. Idiot was standing in the middle of a road. He had that look about him, and I thought he might’ve escaped something. Don’t remember a lot after that.”

Nero wondered exactly how long it had been that Ra’s had him… how long had it been since Dante had last seen him?

Instead, he shook his head, wishing the action would’ve rid all thoughts of the Sparda brothers from his head.

More importantly, what was Rosso Angelo— Jason— doing here instead of recovering after everything? Did he come to interrogate him or something? He hadn’t known Vergil existed until, what, hours ago? Nero’s brain trailed to the worst option. “So… are you here to kill me or something? ”

Jason’s face twisted, a dark look of disdain felt easier for Nero to digest than the ambivalent, relaxed attitude he had before. He was sick of people depending on lying and acting to his face to get what they wanted from him. “I don’t kill kids.”

“I turn eighteen next—”

“And anyway,” Jason cut off and Nero rolled his eyes wishing he could hurl around metal bat at the guy again. “I’m all for holding grudges but you’re not your old man.”

Jason ran a hand down the side of his face, looking infinitely old for a twenty something year old. “Plus, despite everything that’s happened… I think we both know the guy hasn’t been lucid for a while now.”

Nero remembered the way Vergil had stumbled from the glass chamber full of Lazarus water. LZ-V had been around for weeks at this point, and Jason gone for a little over a month. How long had he spent being drained and harvested in that cave?

Nero knew from Tim and Damian that a quick dip was enough to heal wounds, a longer soak could reverse years off of someone’s bones— but to spend weeks on end drowning in it? Nero recalled the dazed, vacant look in Vergil’s eyes that swept over him like he wasn’t there beyond some abstract concept of a obstacle he had to conquer.

“They say you were put into the Lazarus Pits. Is that why he was… and you’re all…”

Vaguely gesturing to Jason’s person, though his eyes lingered on the beauties he’d tucked into his leather holsters. He wondered how good he was with them considering the man’s reputation as a notorious one in a generation crime lord.

The insinuation drew a shoulder shaking laugh from the man that was obviously hiding some old wound beneath it. “Oh no, everything after that first little dip? All me. I’m not a saint and I won’t convince you that I am. Don’t know if your pops is such a stand up guy either but… who knows. Can’t really judge him all that well straight after popping out of a Pit. I think everyone’s entitled to a fair chance. Still, my opinion isn’t what matters here.”

Jason dragged his hand through his hair in a familiar way that made Nero’s chest twinge as he thought of Dante. “I’ve got a bone to pick, but it ain’t with your dad and not with your uncle either.”

Nero had only really just come to the realization that before he'd entered this city, he had not a single living blood family member. Now, not only was someone who he knew of his uncle, but the father that he’d thought had left him on an orphanage’s cold concrete doorstep was actually still alive and probably had zero clue he existed.

“Not so sure what you wanna accomplish by leaving here. Honestly, this idiot family would take you in a heartbeat. They’re just pretty shit at showin’ it.”

Now, that was a pretty big load of crap. Nero wondered if Batman had Hood on as a sales rep, maybe recruitment for the flippy bird sidekick job was low. “I don't know man, pretty sure Tim was stealing my blood and near tranquilizing me at one point.”

“Ah, don’t take that to heart, he does it to everyone. We’re still trying to get him house trained.”

Nero sighed, moving on. “Damian’s—”

“—completely convinced you’re the coolest person ever? Yeah, probably.”

Slightly annoyed at his cutting in, Nero countered quicker. “As if. Fine, Batman was definitely mean mugging me every time he saw me. Pretty sure he hates Dante’s guts too.”

Batting a hand in the air, Jason blew out a sharp burst of air. “He’s Batman, he does that sometimes. And anyway most of that was when he thought Dante shot me dead in a ditch somewhere. Turns out Batman doesn’t know everything, kid, get used to it. It’s sort of the norm around here.”

Nero was getting quickly tired of Jason’s hold hands and sing method, and he snapped praying the guy could just let him go or let him be. “Look man, what do you want from me? Are you gonna let me go, lecture me ‘till I die— what?”

Jason didn’t reply, seemingly more focused on the phone he now had raised in his hand.

“Hello? Hey, dickhead, I’m talking to you—”

Despite knowing he couldn’t do a damn thing about that, Nero readied his arm to wack it out of his grip and send it tumbling into the cavern the room he was in was suspended near.

BANG!

“Aaaaand we’re in!” Jason’s sudden exclamation made Nero jump slightly. And with a smack to the side of one of the walls that kept him contained, the keypad outside the doors sputtered and smoked before coming to a hissing silent stillness. “Damn, B updated since I last broke in.”

A pause.

“…Or, actually I think it was out. Tomayto, tomatoe. Anyway, sorry, these damn spoofers Oracle gave me we’re not as advertised. Five minutes my ass.”

Nero blinked, looking at the now open space before him, the sheen of reflective glass and a force field of nullifying material evaporated like water.

“Still meant what I said though. You’re not exactly in here for the purpose of capture and interrogate anymore. Honestly, I think for the first time since all this shit started B and that uncle of yours might actually be on the same page.”

“Right, and what page is that?” Nero asked, making his way to the door where Jason stood. They’d probably be standing nose to nose if the door had pulled out all the way.

Jason shrugged as he pulled a dramatic this way gesture as he popped open the doors wider. “Making sure their punk ass kids don’t get caught up in shit way over their heads.”

Nero snorted. “Aren’t you in that category?”

“I’m a grown ass man. Batman doesn’t babysit.”

“Dunno, you seemed sorta sweet when he was rockabye babying you after your transformation.” Nero smirked, making a swooning noise and cradle motion with his arms.

Jason pointed at him, eyes narrowed. “Right, so I could actually lock you in there again…”

Nero smiled, pushing past the guy to make his way down the stairs. At it’s bottom, he spotted a round table overflowing with random gadgets and other related projects. What caught his eye was the very obvious double barreled gun laying out innocently for the taking.

Nero patted his pockets, finding his coat empty and tossed a glare over his shoulder as he gestured to the stolen gun.

Jason put his hands up lazily. “Don’t look at me like that, I of all people know not to mess with a man’s guns.”

Putting his hands on his hips, he adjusted his jacket in a way that showed off the many holsters he had attached to his person. “It was probably Timmers, the nosy bastard. Batman isn’t really a big gun fanatic so he probably put it there for safe keeping. Better than scrap metal.”

Nero shivered, a dark chill going down his spine at the thought. Pushing that away, he checked the Blue Rose thoroughly before reloading and tucking her into his coat pocket.

“…Was that a S&W 500?”

“It was before I got my hands on her.”

“Double barrel… you do that yourself?”

Nero hummed in vague assent.

Jason hummed back, mimicking him. His tone told Nero it wasn’t in a mocking way, but simply playing around. “Not bad.”

Nero tried hard to hide the small smile that crept up on his face. At least someone in this family was sensible.

Sure Damian had a pretty sick sword but everyone else? How the hell were they getting by with staffs and batarangs? He shuddered, comforted by the oddly normal Red Hood. It was a wild thing to think but honestly Nero was more baffled with the rest of them than the literal crime lord.

Speaking of the rest of the man’s crime fighting family, both Nero and Jason looked up to where the cave led to stairs and an elevator upstairs. A creaking noise was obvious in the acoustics of the cave, even over all the real live bat squeaking from somewhere towards the ceiling.

Freezing like a deer in headlights at the creaking betrayal the stairs under them made, Tim and Damian looked down from their stoop guiltily. In civilian clothes they both looked oddly defenseless.

“I know for damn certain you two aren’t supposed to be down here.” Jason called up, crossing his arms.

Damian sniffed, leaping down the rest of the way in a crouch, a brushed passed Jason who looked more amused than offended by the action. Damian spoke as he sat in the large chair in front of a computer that took up a large portion of the wall like a throne.

Now that his face wasn’t swamped by the domino and shadowed by his cowl, Nero could tell the kid was a few years younger than he was. His ever present look of disdain transferred from his Robin persona in a way that screamed middle school rage rather than I-break-criminal-faces-for-a-living.

“Father is swamped with reports flooding the city. I’m surprised you’re not already gone to take back your territory.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “The Alley?”

Damian hummed, pressing a button behind him that lit up the massive computer screen that took up the cave wall. A map of Gotham displayed dozens of pinpoints. “Crime Alley, the Narrows, Old Gotham, Chinatown— almost everywhere has reports of hybrids being set loose or regular old demons slipping through. More Pit leaks the city isn’t bothering on filling up, a few instances where the earth shaking got especially bad and branches started breaking ground. Ivy certainly isn’t too happy with the new invasive species.”

Tim who had been side eyeing Nero who had been pretending to be distracted with maintenance of the Blue Rose cut in. He turned to Jason after a moment. “I’m expecting compensation for picking up your slack. The place got pretty rank.”

Tim smirked, eyes glinting with mischief. The light died when he seemed to mutter something else. “I mean, you have been gone for a month, man. You’re like, the Alley’s Batman— uh, boogeyman.”

Jason blankly stared at Tim. “Nice save.”

Tim grimaced and Nero fought the beginnings of a smirk across his face. Jason seemed to mull something over before abruptly getting to his feet and began walking off.

“I guess that’s our sign to start calling in backup! Kid, let’s take a hike and call up Spoiler.”

Damian made a gagging sound Nero didn’t even know was possible. “I am not calling Spoiler for help.”

“Oh for fucks sake—” Jason grabbed Damian by the collar of his green sweater towards what Nero could see led to lockers and a range of uniforms in glass cases.

When it was just the two of them, Tim broke the awkward silence between Nero himself in a rush.“I shouldn’t have told you like I did. It wasn’t my secret to mess with.”

For a second, Nero wondered if he should give the guy a hard time. But really, Nero had a difficulty wondering what to be angry over. There was nothing Tim, or Damian or Jason for that matter, had wronged him with. Any conflict he had was with the idiot gone to fight Ra’s under an abandoned demonic Arkham experiment laboratory.

The Bats had just become the unfortunate middle man for his sudden family drama. Wild shit for Nero who had been convinced he was an orphan less than 24 hours ago.

Sighing, he finally turned to Tim. “Man, I just got the lame heart-to-heart shit with your brother. Really, it’s no big deal. Besides if you hadn’t told me, Dante definitely never would have. I was being a dick too anyway and I’m pretty sure Damian’s evil grandpa totally named dropped you guys within five minutes of us meeting, so. We’re even.”

Without the guilt weighing in his shoulders, Tim looked his age for once. Nero could tell he’d probably been agonizing over it for how ever long he’d been knocked out. He was glad all that was over with, Nero could co-write his book on guilt complexes with his eyes closed.

Instead of acknowledging something Nero had long past put behind him, Tim gestured with his head to where Jason and Damian were now in uniform bickering over a row of darkly colored motorcycles.

Each were vaguely reminiscent of top of the line models, all suped up with extra fuel lines, and gadgets galore. Where a market version of the same bikes might’ve been layered with ABS plastic fairings, even from here Nero could tell these had been reinforced, gloss speaking more to the sheen of carbon fiber made for racing— speed and durability. Every single part seemed customized down to the textured seat, those crazy exhaust pipes he'd love to get for Red Queen, custom tires, and heavy duty shock springs— fuck, Nero wanted to know how it handled cornering…

A bout of excitement bubbled in his chest at the idea of getting beneath their fairings to see what it’s guts looked like.

There was a pitch black beauty at the end, glossed with a midnight blue sheen that made it’s body flicker like deep water in low light. Tim pointed at it, like he could read his mind. “You ever ride a bike before?”

Nero damn near swooned, turning to Tim in disbelief. “You’re fucking joking.”

Damian tossed him a set of keys, already on a bike of his own. There was a nervous smile barely noticeable on his lips as he spoke. “We don’t joke around here, remember, Nero?”

Nero didn’t hide his own smiling spreading across his face.

Jason patted his back, a gleaming red helmet over his head instead of the domino from before, as Tim left to get dressed. “We get outta here fast enough, I’ll show you where the minigun is.”

Nero had never been faster in his life. Solo riding out of the Batcave into Gotham with the moon on high was quickly becoming the one thing making this fucked up job a win.

Notes:

also if you see any glaring errors or typos LITERALLY LET ME KNOW, MY BETA IS FUTURE ME WAKING UP IN A COLD SWEAT REMEMBERING A LINE I LEFT IN DRAFT 33 AFTER I POSTED 10 HOURS AGO