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Tax evasion was the name of the game. Even if the only things inevitable in life were death and taxes, the IRS would commit ax-murder via audits and the mess of 1065 and 1120 and 6669 forms. The IRS could go scram and die in the endless hellscape that was Gotham, because Roans was on the case.
Our beloved main character, (first name redacted) Roans, started as an intern to an underpaid second assistant to the first assistant to the logistics manager for a factory of a subsidiary of an infamous gun corporation; and because of delegation and over-delegation and the general corruption that permeated through Crime Alley and stuck itself to every surface like glitter, it meant that he was the one that got stuck with all the grunt work. Because naturally, he was the only one that didn’t get paid.
“You owe me one dollar,” he said, “and sixty-eight cents. It’s unfortunate it’s not one cent more. I expect every last penny on this desk right now, or you’ll regret it.” Never mind that the office was a rundown corner shop, where Roans was currently a cashier paid minimum wage hassling a customer, someone who also happened to be his ex-boyfriend.
“Cut the crap,” Evan deadpanned. “Ro, you son of a bitch. Stop making up arbitrary numbers and give me my change.”
“Here, have your thirty-two cents. No one cares.” With his pained customer service voice, he plastered a dead-eyed smile on his face. “Have a good day! I hope you die in medical debt and rot in hell!”
Before he could hurl the coins across the desk at his face and get that sweet sweet cathartic release, the door had slammed shut as Evan hustled down the street with a huff. Roans called to the closing door, “I won’t ever get back with you, Evan! ”
Moodily, he leaned over the counter. “Next,” he called, the rote repetition customary on his tongue. Good Gotham, he wanted it to be eight o’clock soon so he could get out from behind the counter as fast as possible.
This fucking job sucked. There was some allure about telling people you were an accountant good at tax evasion, but then there was some allure about telling people you were an accountant good at tax evasion in Gotham. The Iceberg Lounge’s hiring manager ghosted him after he realized Roans wasn’t that type of accountant .
So here he was, stuck at a corner store where he was pretty sure his boss used as a money laundering front. Minimum-wage shop attendant was better than unpaid intern to a shitty factory job that only paid in “experience,” but there was no allure in watching your ex come in and buy the same bland black coffee every day.
…And then there was a click . Before he could react—he knew what a gun sounded like, he wasn’t a dumb fuck, he was literally from Crime Alley— it was already pressed against his head.
Never mind, at least the factory wasn’t robbed every other day. This job fucking sucks.
A robbery would’ve been such a life-altering, traumatic event, if it wasn’t for the fact that this was the same script for the six millionth time. Blah blah blah, you get robbed once in Gotham, it’s all the same after.
“Put all the cash in the register in here.” Roans barely got to look up to the robber sliding an oily McDonald’s bag at him—no doubt five minutes prior it had held fries, it was still warm, for God’s sake—when he began to twitch irritably.
“Dude, there’s no cash in the register. There’s a gas station down the street if you’re so inclined, but unless you want me to give you two dollars and thirty-two cents in change on the floor, the door’s right there.”
Robbing people was like a side hobby for every third Gothamite on a bad day—but at least, a robber from Gotham would believe him. But, apparently, this robber was either the stupidest robber in Gotham, or he was from out of town, because he said: “Don’t try to fucking trick me. Put the cash in the bag. ”
Next came the dilemma: how to break it to the robber. There was nothing except for Evan’s two measly dollars in the register, and Roans wouldn’t want to subject anyone to anything his ex-boyfriend touched. Gotham corner shops didn’t hold cash because robbers would take it all, the sentient city would siphon it off, or the Joker would accidentally blow it up along with the entire block the next time he escaped from Arkham.
From behind gritted teeth, Roans said again, “ There’s no cash in the register. ”
In response, the gun pushed harder into his head. “Stop lying, dipshit.”
“Stop assuming I’m lying, asshole! Go pick up the fuckin’ coins off the floor, for all I care—”
“Last chance to put the cash in the bag or else your brains will be the only thing in this store!”
All this for some petty cash. Go rob a bank next time, asshole, Roans seethed as he slowly, exaggeratedly typed the code to open the register, all while cursing himself for not keeping a knife up his sleeve like he normally did. If his brains became corner store décor because a robber was too idiotic to take his words for what they were, Roans was going to reincarnate himself and kill everyone involved. That seemed like a sufficiently Gotham-esque revenge plot.
As the gun pressed even harder into his head—seriously, this guy had impeccable arm strength for a McDonalds bag heist—and Roans punched the third button with enough force to dislodge one of the wires linked to the machine, there was a knock on the door.
It pushed open with the creaky dinging of a rusted doorbell. Jesus Christ. Who was enough of an idiot to barge into an active robbery?
A splash of bright red caught his eye. Ominous glowing eye-lights, a bright red helmet that glinted in faint streetlight that appeared to be also decorated in bloodred— oh. The Red Hood. As much as Roans had heard about the crime lord-turned-vigilante-turned-whatever-he-was-now (maybe a crime… vigilante?), he had never once graced his presence in person.
…Except that was a lie. He had seen him once before, when the Red Hood had turned up at his workplace to blow up the entire factory and lay off everyone involved. Before Hood had turned to leave, vanishing in a style eerily reminiscent of a certain Bat man, Roans had screamed into the night, “You owe me a fucking job that actually pays, Red Hood!”
Back in the present, the Red Hood was still the same ol’ intimidating vigilante that had blown up that factory and cost Roans his—unpaid, horrible—job. He had platform boots, if only to add to his height, and the skintight leather aesthetic that screamed, I would hang your corpse on the street and burn your entrails if you’re a rapist .
“Who the fuck are you?” The robber was clearly new to town, because if he was talking back to the Red Hood, he either had balls or wanted his balls shot off. His gun arm was wavering, though—it probably wasn’t every day he saw bright red motorcycle-like helmets and ominous leather and oh, good Gotham, those guns. Modified to the point that they looked custom, but Roans could personally attribute to how the semi-automatics were bought in bulk from a local gun manufacturer and written off as a business expense. And he knew that as the former intern to assistant to the blah blah blah blah whatever to the factory that manufactured those guns.
Ah, the sweet release of death (the Second Amendment) and capitalism.
“I could be asking the same of you,” the low, menacing helmet replied as the Red Hood cocked his head eerily. Unlike his gun. Which was, surprisingly, holstered at his hip. “Scram.”
The robber was getting nervous at that point. “Uh,” he stammered, which was not a good way to start a sentence with the Red Hood. “Look, man, I don’t know what your deal is—with you or your helmet—but I’m not looking for trouble. I—!”
He trailed off as the Red Hood took one step forward in soundproofed silence or he was just a ghost, who knew. His hands were deceptively in the air in mock consolation, but those hands could draw and fire his guns in nary a blink, if news reports and shaky video footage of vigilantes battling the next Gotham supervillain uploaded to Twitter had any credibility. “‘Not looking for trouble,’” Hood mocked, “but you don’t know where you fucking are. Metropolis breeds idiots these days.”
The robber blinked. His gun wavered. “How’d you—?”
This confrontation was taking too long. By too long, of course, Roans meant two sentences long, but he didn’t have all the time in the world when his boss would make him work unpaid overtime to clean up whatever bloody mess the Red Hood left after his shift.
Roans picked up the entire cash register. With a heave and a throat-wrenching war cry that was more for the drama than actual function, he threw it at the robber’s head. The robber didn’t even have time to dodge before he was out cold, materializing with a heavy thunk on the floor.
In an effort to be casual, Roans opened his mouth despite all his instincts telling him it was an objectively bad idea. “Red Hood—or, ah, do you prefer Mister Hood? ” Roans said. He didn’t tremble as much as he expected to when the Red Hood stopped laughing to solely stare at him—he was brain empty, no thoughts right now, the effort of throwing the cash register and dealing with an idiot Metropolis robber sapping all his energy. He said the first thing that came to mind, and picked up the mint tin from on the counter. “Want a mint?”
Hood stared at the robber, and then at him.
And then he began to laugh. And laugh. And laugh.
While Hood was still laughing his ass off, Roans held his ground, stubbornly holding the mint tin like it was a throwing weapon. “They’re on the house. I was just about to head out.”
“Sorry, mints rot through my tongue. And call me Hood.” The Red Hood—yes, the same fucking mass murderer Red Hood—sounded like he was fighting back another laugh. “ Mister Hood was my father.”
“I—okay. What do you mean mints rot through your tongue?”
Mister—ah, just Hood looked like he was raising an eyebrow. Not that Roans could tell, but he could tell. “You don’t want to know. Ask me a different question.”
“When do I get a job that pays more than this thing? My manager would totally make me pay for the register.”
Realization seemed to dawn on Hood’s helmet, if that helmet could show any emotion but blank menacingness—his body seemed to shift minutely. “I know you,” he said, as if that wasn’t an ominous statement in and of itself. “You’re the intern with the unfortunate name.”
“ Hey—!”
“You’re named after a reincarnating malevolent child spirit, Robin Roans.”
“Don’t call me th—wait, what?” The tension that had been lingering in the air suddenly broke as Roans stared at Hood, skeptical. Yet, at the same time, there was a newfound fear for the traffic-cone child vigilante who was great and kicking you when you least expected it. “Actually?”
Hood was smirking under that helmet, it was so fucking evident based on literally everything about him. “Yes, of course. They’re magically bound to Batman—this is so wildly off topic, but long story short it’s part of this weird, long drawn out summoning ritual thingy. Also, intern with the unfortunate name, I need an accountant.”
This felt like a fever dream. No fucking way the literal Red Hood just said that—“An accountant? Who are you, the Penguin? ‘Cause the Iceberg Lounge hiring manager—seriously, I didn’t know they had a hiring manager, but I guess they do—tried to hire me, but I’m not that type of accountant.”
“You.” The Red Hood paused. Roans resisted the urge to squirm. “You—not that type of accountant!? Haven’t you heard I castrate rapists? Who do you think I am?”
“…A crime lord in Crime Alley?”
“You—oh, that makes sense.” The Red Hood gingerly stepped over the robber’s unconscious body, and casually nudged it into the corner. And then he proceeded to lift up his hands, ignoring how Roans instinctively ducked under the cabinet to avoid nonexistent gunshots. This felt like sacrilege. It felt so strangely absurd. Roans had to fight not to stare at Hood’s domino-masked bare face.
(That erased any conspiracy theories that the Red Hood was the ghoulish spawn of sentient Gotham City.)
He chose to ignore it and continue their little back-and-forth conversation. Wow, what a wild fucking night. Here he was, casually chatting with the Red Hood. “Why do you need an accountant?”
Hood scoffed. Now that his helmet was off—seriously, what the actual fuck— he shook his head, black hair gently floating with his movement. He looked like some black-haired model from a D-list magazine with his imposing, definitely-ripped-because-of-all-that-crime-lording figure, and not like a crime lord. “Have you seen the state of finances here? In Crime Alley? Everyone’s too good at extortion with guns and not good at extortion by tax fraud. I can’t keep filing those tax forms by myself when dumbfuck Metropolis robbers keep threatening poor corner shops in Crime Alley, can I?”
That seemed plausible. But… “That still doesn’t explain why you want me?”
“Simple. I saw your work—or more accurately, I seized all the files—at the gun factory and you can do basic arithmetic.”
Roans raised an eyebrow dubiously. “I’m still not convinced.” That seemed like a daring thing to say to someone known to have decapitated a room full of mob bosses and stuffed them in a duffel bag, but based on what little Roans had scavenged about the Red Hood and his reputation, he wouldn’t hurt innocents.
Now, whether Roans was an “innocent” was up for debate. But—
“How much will you pay me?”
Hood scoffed. Again. And he was smirking from underneath that white-lensed domino mask, which was so unsettling after Roans had imagined his glowing helmet-eyes smirking a very similar fake smirk. “More than this, obviously. Double what you make right now.”
“Make it three times more and I’m in.”
“Done.”
The Red Hood did not offer to shake Roans’s hand, but his hand was covered in blood, so fair enough. “I’ll be sure to note that cash registers are your signature weapon,” he said. “And that you prefer your last name. Also, it comes with all-expenses paid healthcare courtesy of our favorite clinic; since we’re in Crime Alley, I expect you’ll make use of it frequently. Happy tax fraud!”
As the Red Hood left in a suitably dramatic grappling hook fashion, Roans had a new joy, actual healthcare, and an opportunity to commit tax fraud. What a fucking eventful last half-hour.
Just another day in the worst city in the world.