Peelin' Mad Caps [Batman]

[Red Hood]

Players: Batman and the Red Hood
Location(s):Hatter's Wonderland
Plot Summary: The Mad Hatter has taken over a portion of Gotham City and using his mind control tech he's made the women into Alice's and everyone else into his loyal guards/look outs. Can anyone stop him?

"The answer is 'yes'," Red Hood spoke bluntly as he spun through the air and delivered a hard roundhouse kick straight into Killer Croc's snout. "You are going back to Arkham." The oversized alligator man crashed to the ground on his back with Red Hood standing over him in victory. He used thick chains to keep Croc cozy until the police could arrive and made good on Jason's promise, in the meantime the Red Hood himself had more work to do that night.

His work for the next few hours took him all over the city of Gotham dealing with a lunatic here, a lunatic there, everywhere a lunatic. Until finally he reached a neck of the Gotham woods he did not recognize. Judging from where he'd come from and what direction in traveled in Jason was positive of where he should have been but he didn't recall a carnival being there. That's what the place looked like, a giant carnival or one big amusement park. Everything was brightly colored, objects were much larger than they should have been, the buildings looked like decoration cut from cardboard. Jason stood at the brink of entering this place just marveling at the insanity of it all.

Over a loud system there was cheery music playing. Cheery enough to make your ears bleed. Up in the sky a helicopter circled over head shining its spotlight sporadicly but it didn't hang around for long. Even more confused now Jason decided he wouldn't ever figure this crap out if he just stood there. With very little actual desire to enter Jason set foot off into the wonderland. As he did he spotted a familiar (horrid) face. "Scarlett?"

[Batman]

“So you’re telling me that he managed to create some type of Winter Wonderland over night?” Dick stared in belief at the massive carnival that was taking place right in the middle of East Side. The music was giving him a massive headache and he had a feeling that it had some psychedelic qualities that helped keep the hundreds of girls in the carnival under some type of hypnotic spell. “Apparently, Master Grayson. Though I would expect you to have figured that out on your own. You are the detective after all.” Dick frowned and stood to his feet and crossed his arms over his chest. This wasn’t good news. “I guess that the black out last night was when Mad Hatter started to build this carnival. This also explains all the comments about truancy in the news this morning.” Of course most people didn’t like to go to school but when three hundred girls all from one public school near East End didn’t show up to school you knew something up. What was more important to note was that most of them were blond.

Definitely Mad Hatter.

A helicopter roared over head and Dick noted that it was piloted rather clumsily by goons. Dick was guessing that they were working for Mad Hatter. The “Metro News 1” sign painted across the helicopter meant they had stolen it. Either these men had been tasked with shooting “memorable” footage for Mad Hatter [something he had done before] or they were taking a joy ride. At any rate this was Dick’s ticket in. “I’ve found an entry way. Batman out.” Dick raised his grapple gun and fired it at the tail of the helicopter. It wrapped around the tail and Dick quickly hit the retract button. He sailed through the air and efficiently avoided the rotary blades at the edge of the tail. He landed on it and crouched low to avoid decapitation. The sudden weight resulted in the helicopter veering. One of the men who had been holding a HD video camera poked his head to look at the back of the helicopter. As he did Dick ducked and quickly scaled underneath the helicopter and gripped the landing rut underneath it.


Dick noted a massive light suspended under the vehicle and he shattered it with one well-placed elbow blow. Then he reached up and grabbed the lens of the hd video camera the thug had been using to film the festivities. Dick tugged it out of the man’s grasp and as he did pulled himself into the cabin of the helicopter. “This is a whole new level of sickness. All of you deserve a star appearance on Dateline.” Dick grabbed the man holding the lens camera and pushed him into the only other man in the cabin. They both landed on each other in a tangle on the ground. Dick handcuffed them to each other before ducking into the narrow cockpit of the helicopter. The pilot didn’t notice him until Dick was sitting next to him in the co-pilot seat. “Land this thing on that tacky helipad down there or else I’ll throw you out the helicopter!” Dick yelled to the helicopter pilot. The man nodded nervously before landing the helicopter on an elevated platform in the middle of the tacky carnival. He was guessing that this place served as some sort of beacon that Mad Hatter was using to continuously control these girls. He could be wrong but even if he was this was the perfect place to land.

Dick stepped outside the helicopter and scanned the crowd. His eyes focused on someone he was familiar with. He lifted his hand to his cowl and toggled his lens binoculars. He zoomed in and saw none other than Holly Robinson stumbling around and next to her was a horribly scarred girl. Then Dick saw a man in a red helmet pushing his way through the crowd towards them. Dick paused as he put two and two together. The scarred girl was clearly Red Hood’s protege. Dick would never forget her face and neither would Damian. Red Hood was probably here for the same reason Dick was. For a moment he felt conflicted about his adopted younger brother being here but then two of Mad Hatter’s armed security guards approached them and Dick was forced to deal with that. After taking care of the men he pushed himself through the crowd of girls towards Red Hood as more security guards pursued him through the crowd. Dick realized he was getting nowhere so he turned on his comm unit and transmitted a message to a radio frequency he knew Red Hood was tuned into. “Hood? This is Batman. Try and meet me by the cotton candy stand. We can lose the guys trailing us in the crowd and formulate a strategy.”

He was extending a hand of friendship. Would Hood respond?

[Red Hood]

Dick was talking to him. How frickin' annoying. The streets were jam packed with girls (with either blond hair or blond wigs) staggering about aimlessly like some weird preppy zombies. This was like something out of one of Jason's worse nightmares, what made it worse was the fact that this was very real and someone he was a friend to had been caught in Hatter's sick little scheme. As Jason shoved his way through the mob of girls he glanced backward to spot Dick and the men giving chance, he also briefly looked toward the stand his 'brother' had mentioned. "Off my frequency Batman, I'm not going anywhere."

It didn't surprise the Red Hood that Dick could get onto his particular communications line but it annoyed him that Dick did it in this way; to help. Jason wasn't looking for help, he was looking to save Scarlett and then kick Mad Hatter's tiny little ass. "Scarlett!" She seemed to be getting farther away as he got closer, Jason had to actually run now, so he shouted after her. That was a mistake. The girls dressed up and made up like Alice suddenly stopped their dazed stumbling and turned to face him. Small, well manicured fingers curled into tight fists as faces powdered in make up turned into sinister sneers. Jason slowed to a trot and then stopped completely. The looks on each Alice's face was painfully familiar to him. The look was obvious murderous rage.

"Uh...Bats, you still there?" He inched backward now, the girl's all fully facing him. Jason was completely surrounded and all he could hope was that they'd let him back his way out. Hope seldom got people out of sticky situations though. As Red Hood back tracked the girls quickly broke out in a run straight toward him, unfortunately Scarlett was lost in the madness of it all. "We have an issue!"

[Batman]

Red Hood’s transmission only made Dick smile. Jason would come around eventually once he realized he couldn’t handle this alone. It’d be the perfect “I told you so” moment. Sibling rivalry was one of those things that Bat-Family members thrived on. That was the constant in their interactions and that’s the only thing Dick could really depend on. He had to admit that he was glad to see that Jason was out of his horrid pill helmet phase. He wasn’t entirely sure if it had been Jason under that mask. It had been the most ridiculous thing he had ever seen. As he pushed and shoved his way through the crowd towards Jason he realized that this was going to be an uphill battle. As he continued to move he finally felt a man’s hand on his shoulder. Dick turned around and put a man in an arm lock so tight that the man couldn’t move his arm without shattering it. Dick then pushed the man through the crowd and used him as a plow of sorts. It wasn’t even like the girls noticed. They were all wandering around aimlessly.

What drugs were they on?

Then Red Hood suddenly changes his mind as the girls’ decided to switch from “drugged mode” to “attack mode”. The girls surrounding Hood all seemed to focus on him at once. Dick was guessing they hadn’t seen him yet due to him being just a little more subtle than his counterpart. Though he doubted this would last long. “No. You have an issue.” Dick glanced over his shoulder to note that the other two men were catching up. The girls all suddenly began to move towards Hood and as they did Dick was nearly knocked down from the sudden force. The other two men were pushed down as well and as Dick struggled to maintain his footing in the stampede he realized that he too would wind up getting trampled if he didn’t move. Dick pulled out his grapple gun and fired it at the nearest building. He [along the man he was holding] flew through the air. Dick landed on the building long enough to drop the man on the roof before he attached the grapple to his belt and dove back towards the crowd.

He saw Jason standing in the crowd and he didn’t want to know what his younger brother would do when the girls reached him. He didn’t think that Jason would gun down innocent children but Dick couldn’t say he’d be surprised if he did. “Gotcha.” Dick grabbed Jason by the arm as he flew through the air and pulled him upwards. Their combined weight made the grapple line sag but he was able to pull Jason away from the crowd. As they glided towards the cotton candy stand Dick detached the cable line and they both wound up crashing into the wooden structure. Dick straightened to his feet and saw that they had bought just a minute or two of extra time. “Looking for Scarlett isn’t going to solve this crisis. Finding Mad Hatter will. You ready to handle this now or are you going to go back to playing lone ranger?” Dick wasn’t exactly being the nicest guy in the world right now but he wasn’t up to deal with Jason’s attitude. He heard that Jason was getting his act together and was currently leading the Outsiders but he also remembered that Jason had spent the better part of his time being a pain in the ass for Bruce, Dick and Tim after he had come back from the dead.

[Red Hood]

Was this Gotham or some hell hole movie set of the latest zombie flick? Dumb question. On a normal day in Gotham that'd be a tough on to answer. There was really no mistaking it though, Jason was definitely in Gotham, Scarlett was definitely under some sort of mind alteration, and Mad Hatter was definitely behind this. Moving through the girls that closed in on him was like wading through chest-high gravy. Jason pushed, open hand, on the girls to keep them at bay. They snatched and clawed at him but luckily he was fully covered; Jason knew from experience how much female nails could hurt the skin. Damn chicks liked scratching too much.

"Ass." Jason muttered more to himself but still knew he was heard by Dick, but who really cared? The guy was an ass! "Seriously?" This time Jason was talking to neither himself nor Dick, but the girl who was latched around his ankle threating to knock him over; not to mention she was gnawing on him. "Back off, kid!" Instinct told Jason to pull out his pistol and put one in this girl's skull, but he controlled himself and remembered she couldn't. With gritted teeth he shook the girl with the vacant look in her eyes off of him and dove into the first burly man who reached him. The both crashed to the ground and immediately girls began to pile on Jason's back.

The girls were mostly an annoyance, the guy Jason was on top of was a target though. His fist pounded facial muscle . This guy was likely just as innocent as the girls were but he was a pretty big dude, he could take it was Jason's reasoning. Once Red Hood felt the guy had received enough facial rearranging he went to work forcing himself through the girls. They clung and pulled and scratched and bit; and actually Jason could feel some of it. From the pile of writhing females Jason's arm finally broke the surface and not a moment later he felt his entire body get yanked from underneath the schoolgirls.

"Thanks." Jason stated begrudgingly as he sailed away from the girls and kept his body laxed to easy their swing as much as possible. When they landed on the roof Jason checked his gear, "Damn crazy chicks ripped my jacket. Now I know what popstars feel like." Jason quipped before turning to face his once upon a time brother. "How do you suggest we find Hatter? The guy's insane, not stupid; he won't be out in plain sight!" Jason was about to say more but he felt himself suddenly get light headed. He blinked and shook his head. That damned music, it was bothering him the entire time they were in Hatter's realm (now they were just on the outskirts again). "There's something in the music. Subliminal messaging, or a thought altering frequency, or something! Do you think we can find Hatter before we turn into zombies like the rest of them?"

Jason wasn't an idiot and though he preferred to work alone he knew something like this was too big for him alone. He wasn't an idiot, but that still didn't mean he was big enough to admit to Dick that he'd need help with this. Dick was just going to have to accept that a pain in the ass was sticking with him. "My main priority is getting Scarlett from under Tetch's control....and possibly break a few things on Tetch. Feel free to do whatever it is Batman does."

[Batman]

“What makes you think he won’t be in plain sight?” Dick reached into his cape and extracted a piece of wood that had been embedded in his utility belt. He was lucky that it hadn’t found itself in his hip. He then cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. The most important thing about diving back into a mob was staying loose. If you froze up for a second you could find yourself trapped under a mob of wailing children and not having a way out. “Sometimes insane is synonymous with stupid. He craves the spotlight and he loves touching the little girls. He may not be in the open but where’s the easiest place where you can bring girls and not worry about being disturbed?” Dick was referring to the magic mirror tent. It was one of those tents where you were trapped in a maze with dizzying lights and mirrors that distorted your appearance. It was a common gimmick villains used when they wanted to trap their victims and drive them insane. Dick was fairly certain that Mad Hatter was hidden in one of those mirror magic tents. He had seen several of them.

His theory was that Mad Hatter had somehow tricked the girls and some of the men into walking through those magic mirror tents and had somehow hypnotized them into becoming mindless geeks. He also had a feeling that Mad Hatter had then holed himself up in one of those tents because he knew that anyone who pursued him would be driven mad. Dick was certain that he’d be immune to any of the effects the mirror had to offer. His cowl was able to sort out and protect him from any particular musical notes or combinations that his brain didn’t need to hear. The lens in his cowl could help limit any psychedelic images that could drive him mad. And if push came down to shove he trusted Jason to take him down or at least subdue him if things went badly. Of course Jason didn’t have a chance with Dick if they were both fully sober but Dick had a feeling his talent would diminish if he was a mindless zombie. “Don’t worry about me.” Dick reached up to his cowl and tapped his ear. “Perks of wearing the cowl.” He frowned and stared at Jason in thought for a moment. “If you have an i-pod or anything to play in your helmet that drowns out the music you may be fine. Though I’m not afraid to floor you if you do anything stupid. Under the influence of drugs or not.”

It was a warning he had to make. He literally could not trust Jason Todd no matter how much he wanted to. Like Mad Hatter Jason was crazy but not stupid. Also like Mad Hatter being crazy could be synonymous with doing stupid things. It was a diagnosis that Dick wasn’t exactly authorized to make but Jason’s past actions pointed to a crazy person. “Just be grateful that Scarlett is outside-“ He honestly doubted that Mad Hatter would want her anyway. “-and not in any of those tents. I think we should check them out first. If we end up in that crowd we’re going to have to resort to violence if we want to get out alive and hopefully I won’t have to tell you why that’s a bad thing.” He sighed. “If you feel the need to head back into that crowd then do so but I guarantee that my way will actually work. It also won’t get you killed.” He wasn’t going to force Jason but he hoped his younger brother would make the right decision.

[Red Hood]

"When has Hatter ever hidden in plain sight? The guy's a pervert yeah, but he's probably Gotham's most cowardly rogue." Hatter liked to be kept out of sight, the only time he showed himself or hid in plain sight like Dick thought he was doing, was when he was mind controlling you or preparing to do so. When Dick spoke Jason just looked at him but his silence was not long lasting. "Insane synonymous with stupid? Learned that studying under Jeremiah Arkham, did ya?" Jason shook his head but honestly he had no time for it, whatever Dick had to say Jason would just let him say it. He wasn't really focused on too much of it anyway. To the new Batman this may have been some sort of team up between guys who weren't on the best terms but would then end up best friends because of it, but for Jason this was as simple as divide and conquer. He and Batman would divide their attention to specific areas, and then Red Hood would conquer Mad Hatter's face with his boot.

Under his hood Jason made a face at Dick for the apparent superpowers the Batsuit gave him. As Robin Jason had always been impressed by the Batsuit and the number of things it could do and protect the wearer from, but when Jason had first returned to Gotham and set out on a fight with Bruce...well he learned just how much cheating the Batsuit really was. "I'll be fine. Will over...whatever the *@^# that is." Jason wasn't going to be mind controlled by anyone, least of all Mad Hatter. "And don't kid yourself." Floor the Red Hood. Ha.

"Let's move." Dick certainly thought he was the lead on this, and that certainly was pissing Jason off. He was going to accompany Dick to the mirror tents but he wasn't going to stick around their for too long. Jason mentally decided that he needed to shut off the music that was seemingly coming from nowhere over Hatter's Wonderland, and if he couldn't get that done then he'd just need to get Scarlett out and be done with the whole thing. Leave Batman to clean up this mess. From a small compartment inside his jacket Jason withdrew a small tube like device. He pointed it out in front of him and from the end shot a thin wire; a grapple line. Red Hood glanced at Batman briefly before jumping from the rooftop and slinging himself toward the first mirror tent.

[Batman]

Dick watched as Jason headed towards the mirror tent and paused to shake his head before he pursued them. He jumped off of the roof and spread to its full glider length and allowed gravity to do the rest. As he did he wondered exactly what had changed between the two of them. The last time he had run into Jason the man had been a nut in a pillhelmet. Now he was back to his original outfit he was just as crazy as he had been when he had crawled out of the grave. Dick was happy for that because he knew that Jason had the potential to be much crazier. There was nothing Dick wanted to do more than mend their relationship so they could see each other as brothers again. Yet he knew that wasn’t going to happen. There was far too much emotional baggage for them to really look each other in the eye again. So instead he would have to enjoy what they had now. Not that there was much to enjoy but Dick had always been an optimist.

As Dick continued to fly across the air he angled his body so that he’d be able to glide straight through the side of the tent without any problem. He didn’t want to end up crashing against the cloth. Luckily the tent was riddled with enough openings that he was certain he could find his way in. Unfortunately he couldn’t tell if there were any men inside or not. He hadn’t exactly mastered the art of x-ray goggles or at least x-ray goggles that could fit inside the cowl. Going in blind wasn’t an experience Dick was foreign to and as a result he had no problem with it. Bruce had been sure to train all of them to fight with their minds or bodies. When they had all suited up they had seen the perks of suiting up as nothing more than perks. Dick passed Jason as they grew closer to the tent and flew straight through the flaps of the tent.

The cloth parted ways and almost immediately Dick found himself facing a long pane of glass. Dick covered his face moments before he crashed through it. Batman ended his glide with a roll and stood to his feet. Glass was stuck to his hands but other than he was fine. He barely had a chance to really register his surroundings before two massive men rushed him. Dick glanced to his right and barely had a chance to react before they both collided into him. Dick struck the ground and found himself getting punched from all angles. He held his forearms above his face in an attempt to guard his head and then drove his knee into one man’s stomach. The man grunted and Dick was able to kick him off of his body. Dick then stood to his feet and kicked the man in the jaw before he could get up. The first man was able to get to his feet but Dick struck him in the temple with his elbow before he could cause any damage. Dick glanced around for Jason . He frowned as he got a better look of his surroundings. While one panel of glass was shattered there was another one on his left. Dick could see it in his peripherals but he didn’t dare look at it. He was certain that Mad Hatter was using some form of visual manipulation on his victims as well.

[Red Hood]

Sailing boots first the Red Hood breezed through the tent flap that was the doorway to the interior of the hall of mirrors. Not surprisingly the place was horribly lit and enormous mirrors lay out before him in all directions projecting reflections of Jason in varying sizes and shapes. "Fun houses always gave me the creeps." Behind one of his stretched out reflections Jason spotted a fat man in a tailored suit and spotted bowtie. The bald block of badguy charged at Jason's back and Red Hood quickly backflipped over the guy, smirking as he heard the sound of glass shattering.

As Jason landed on his feet he saw the stocky guy climbing out of the broken mirror and he readied himself for a second charge. "Dee or Dum?" The two were identical henchmen who frequently worked for Mad Hatter but Jason always had a hard time telling the two a part. In the long run it hardly mattered as neither of the men were threats in the hand to hand department, but they could be cunning at times. Tweedledee (or dum) didn't answer Jason's question, instead the large man barreled his way toward the vigilante once again. The Red Hood stood his ground as the larger man came closer and closer. At the last moment Jason shifted his footing just slighty, delivered a powerful elbow to Tweedle's jaw then followed with the other fist plunging into the man's gut with enough force to shove all the breath from his lungs. The fist in Tweedledee's gut hit a sharp angle and Jason caught the big man with an elbow uppercut right under the chin. His feet shifted again, this time turning his back toward his enemy, and Jason reached over his shoulder to grab hold of Tweedledee's bald head a split second before the man was launched across the room.

The ground shook as the fat Hatter lackey crashed to the floor and rolled right into one of the large mirrors. The mirror was knocked loose from its stand and toppled over right on top of Tweedledee. Jason winced slightly as broken shards of glass slid over the floor toward his boots. He wasn't sure if that had killed the other man but Jason was pretty positive the guy wouldn't be getting up any time soon. "You still with us, Batman?" Jason called out to his sidekick in the dark.

[Batman]

Dick was just about to call out for Red Hood when the mirror to his left exploded. He held up his cape to protect himself from the shards that were propelled through the air. Dick was just lowering his cape as a massive body slid slowly across the floor and prodded his boot. The vigilante sighed as he glanced at the ground and noted the smeared blood on the ground and the dislocated jaw of Dee (or) Dum. He dropped to his knees for a moment and scanned the man’s body. It looked as if he had cuts all over his body from the glass but other than that he’d live. You didn’t just die from a dislocated jaw. It sucked to have one but that’s what you got when you lived a life of crime. Dick wasn’t sure if Red Hood had lucked out by not killing the man or if he had actively tried not to. Either way that was one less bad guy in their way.

“I’m with you.” He stepped over the body and walked towards Jason. The glass cracked and crumbled under his feet as he finally came to a stop. He considered questioning why Jason had to throw the man through the mirrors but he really hadn’t broken any rules. It was come occurrence to throw a man through a window or a mirror if you wanted to take him out fast enough. Dick had done it before. It just so happened that when Jason did it people wondered if he was being violent for the sake of being violent. Even Dick had fallen into that trap. Yet over the months that Dick had adapted to Jason’s presence he had realized that criticisms weren’t going to do either of them any favors. As far as he was concerned Jason was always a step away from being the nut job in a pill helmet so he wasn’t taking any chances. “He must be beefing up his guys.” Dick had a growing bruise on his forearm. It always sucked when a thug got the jump on you.

Very un-Batman like of him.

“I think….” Dick’s sonar lens automatically began to assemble a 3D model of the building. Another perk that he didn’t need but could take advantage of. His cowl was always synced with the bat-computer and as a result the computer back base could do a good amount of work for him. Soon he had a better idea of where they needed to go. “…this way. Mad Hatter is definitely here. He’s not the type of person to toss around red herrings and I’m already dealing with an uncomfortable amount of subliminal messaging.” While his sonar was working it was flickering on and off more than it should. The mirrors and dull throbbing music was preventing them from working as well as they could. Luckily his cowl was doing a good job of blocking out the music and his lenses were blocking the light waves radiating from the mirrors. As long as he didn’t look directly at them he’d be fine. He began walking. The glass on the bottom of his boots soon began to rub off and he was then as silent as Batman was meant to be.

[Red Hood]

Jason felt like he was getting a headache. He couldn't be sure if it was the pounding from Tweedle-whoever or if Hatter's hypnotic tunes and mirrors were beginning to break him down. Jason never second thought himself though, so he wasn't going to turn back or regret charging into the funhouse. He just had to deal with this and keep his head on. No hypnotic spells were going to get the best of him. "Good." He nodded to Batman upon making his form out in the darkness. He was close to being a goner himself but luckily neither one of them went down so easily.

"Aye aye captain." Jason didn't know where the hell he was going and he was not going to take any chances by looking around at the mirrors that surrounded them; so he had no choice but to follow Batman's lead. Hopefully Dick actually did know where they were going and hopefully they'd get to Hatter sooner rather than later. Keeping at Batman's side Jason followed through the maze of mirrors. As they went further Jason began to notice larger and larger gaps in the spacing of the mirrors. Slowly he drifted a little more behind Batman. At one glance he noticed a familiar head of red hair and immediately stopped with Dick gaining much ground ahead of him.

Scarlet? He questioned the sight mentally and took a step toward the gap. Jason reached out and pushed aside the fabric of the mirror tent, emerging outside in the brightly painted carnival world. "Scarlet." He called to her in a low tone, she was alone now but Jason did not wish to alert anyone to either of them. Separated from Batman he began trotting after Scarlet as she walked alone down a narrow corridor. "Wait, Scarlet!" He had to save her and get her out of there, Batman would be able to handle Hatter on his own.

[Batman]

Dick soon sank into a methodical routine as he blindly followed the 3D model that flickered in front of his eyes. He really didn’t need to see what was in front of him. He only needed to see where he was going. As far as he was concerned the computer model he was following was far more accurate than his own eyes. He was very aware of the fact that music continued to drone along in his brain and the ground beneath his feet felt extremely shaky. The fact that he knew there was someone out there trying to hypnotize him was enough to protect him from completely falling prey to its affect. He just wasn’t sure for how long. All he knew was that he’d need something or someone to punch soon or else he’d become Mad Hatter’s puppet. Maybe he was already the man’s puppet and he didn’t know it. The thought alone disturbed Dick and his hyper paranoia wasn’t making him feel any better. So he started to do something that a sane Batman would never do.

“So how about those Rogues, huh?” Gotham City’s football team was a clever play on its criminal situation. “I think Ward can really…” He stopped when he realized that Jason was no longer following him. The man was stealthy but the Bat-Family had been trained to fight their own kind. They knew how ninjas and stealth fighters thought and worked. Jason wasn’t being quiet and hiding in the shadows. He wasn’t here. “Dammit.” Dick sighed in one breath as he slowly turned the corner. He doubted that Jason had turned. Jason had probably run off. He didn’t know why he had depended on him. Dick went against his better judgment and turned on his night vision. As he searched the hallway for Jason he wasn’t aware of the two thugs sneaking up on him until the very last moment. One of them grabbed Dick by the shoulder and he reacted instinctively.

He grabbed the man’s wrist and with one twist dislocated his hand. He then pulled the man up and over his shoulder and threw him straight into one of the mirrors. That was one less illusionary tool that could drive him crazy. He turned around to face the next man and was disappointed to see that he had welded two large blades to both of his arms. “You can do better than that.” Dick said as he pulled out his escrima sticks to compensate with the man’s weaponry. He wasn’t trying to get himself killed tonight. The thug dashed at him and Dick ducked under the swipe of his blades. He then drove the end of both of his escrima sticks into the man’s gut. The thug gasped for air and Dick struck him in the throat, again limiting his breathing capacity. The thug stumble backwards and reached to grab at his throat for air. Dick realized that the man would only wind up stabbing himself in the throat so he instead sprinted at him and kicked him in the chest. The man flew through another mirror and crashed to the ground with a groan.

Dick walked towards him and planted his boot on the man’s chest. “I’m only going to ask once.” He snarled menacingly as the man groaned and weakly gasped for air. “Where is Mad Hatter?”