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Getting lectured about righteousness and safety by Nightwing was surprisingly fun. The man wasn’t subtle at all though. Did he really not think at all about how it would appear? Sure, he split his time between Bludhaven and Gotham and maybe he had a work connection to one of the few apparently not terrible cops in the sister city but seriously… What were the odds that Dick Grayson had told the local vigilante about the methods of his kidnapping in such vivid detail and that said vigilante would feel strongly enough about it that he had to bring it up the moment he saw Liz walking home from school.
He was also way too casual about walking straight for Crime Alley. She sipped on the milkshake he’d bought her and judged him.
Honestly, this entire lecture was just pushing her into being further convinced that Red Hood and Dick Grayson were family rather than lovers like her uncle fully believed. They were siblings if she was guessing correctly and Dick Grayson was in fact Nightwing. Well, siblings or childhood friends which she supposed could later become lovers but it seemed really really unlikely that a boyfriend would readily switch between being actively shot at and then showing up to eat all of Red Hood’s food in the span of a few hours. That seemed much more like the sibling behavior she saw among her friends.
She’d save the further revelations that explained so much about Red Hood’s relationship with Batman and Robin for later.
For now she judged how similar their lecturing style was, though admittedly she’d take Nightwing over Red Hood. Nightwing got her sweets.
There was a price for it, but she didn’t think it was too bad. He’d spent 5 minutes going on about how she shouldn’t actually let strangers buy her things which devolved into the dangers of taking bribes for anything. It was fine if it was him , because he was a superhero, but not any random person.
His look when she asked if Red Hood was allowed to, since part of the lecture was about criminals and that they could have bad intentions. It was great.
Maybe a block into Crime Alley she asked him to carry her, mostly just to see if he would. He did, settling her on his hip after staring at her suspiciously and asking if she understood that stabbing, drugging, or otherwise compromising a person was wrong. She agreed, after pointing out that she could have done that earlier if she had wanted to and being carried wouldn’t really change that and would in fact make it more dangerous because how was she supposed to get down safely?
That devolved into an explanation of how apparently his suit was stab and puncture proof rather than an explanation of gymnastics like she had rather been hoping but it was still fascinating all the same. She very much wanted to test that claim too, mentally evaluating how to get ahold of a piece of the suit. Would it change if there wasn’t someone in it? Could she get Hood to tell her? Would he tell her the truth? She could probably get a piece of Hood’s outfit, his gloves or something but his outfit was notably heavier armored and seemed a lot more… not mundane but less distinctly supery.
Maybe she could ask Nightwing about getting a sample for school reasons? She got a lot of stuff for ‘school reasons’ when she asked adults. What if he checked though? Oh, maybe she could find that paper about the science fair coming up and run a whole presentation board on how stabbable different types of fabric were.
She could even expand it! She’d overheard her uncle and someone else arguing about which was better for something about fire or burning or insulating, wool or leather. She could not only try to stab pieces of cloth she could set them on fire too!
She was so lost in her plans to talk to her uncle and Hood about acquiring materials that it came as a bit of a surprise when Nightwing stopped. “Oops…”
“Really, Dickiewing? Using civilian children as shields now?”
Oh, they were almost to the new apartment building Hood had moved everyone to which was just down the street from the new warehouse he was using as an official gang headquarters place and unofficial storage of everything that didn’t fit in the apartment building. Nightwing, if he wasn’t Dick Grayson and was actively as much Red Hood’s enemy as they put on a show of, shouldn’t have known how to get this far.
She grinned, waving at Red Hood who was all puffed up in his whole armored getup and with his arms crossed. It was almost the power stance that her communications teacher had been talking about the other day to be more confident before giving a presentation. “Hi, Mr. Hood!”
“I was just making sure she got home safe, Hood.”
“He bought me a milkshake, and was telling me all about how stabbing people in the butt is wrong, oh, and drugging them!”
Nightwing didn’t audibly give a sigh, even as he ruffled her hair. “Stabbing someone anywhere is wrong.” Still, he let her down easy enough which he also shouldn’t have done if he didn’t know Red Hood as well as he claimed he didn’t.
Red Hood’s helmet didn’t give anything away as he stared silently at him. When her feet were on te ground though, he gestured vaguely at Nightwing. “It’s fine if it’s him you’re stabbing.”
“No it’s not!”
Definitely brothers. If she had a boyfriend who offered that someone could stab her she’d be really, really mad and set her uncle on him… or Red Hood. That part wasn’t that relevant right now though, especially if she had such a perfect opening! She pouted, “He said his suit is stab proof so it wouldn’t work anyway.”
“Is it now? Well, we could always test that.” Red Hood broke his power stance, stalking forward even as a knife clicked open in his hand.
Nightwing backed up, holding up his hands in surrender while Liz clapped. “We can! But we need to write it down so I can use it in my science fair project.”
Red Hood paused. “You wha- Don’t you fucking go anywhere you shit! I see you eying the roof. Sorry sweetheart, your what now?”
“In like a month we have a science fair at school! I wanted to test how protective different types of cloth are against cutting, burning, or other stuff and show the results. A superhero suit would be made out of the best stuff right so it’d be really cool to include it!”
“You could just ask Hood to borrow something of his, it’d be a little less distinct.”
Hood’s helmet shifted, staring past her while he fiddled with the knife. “Different materials. Mine’s meant to look less like I’m about to hit the highwire and more like I’m ready to take a bullet.”
“We can shoot the samples too!”
Impressively, both of the adults managed to at the same time declare, “Absolutely not!”
Nightwing huffed. “Your getup makes you look like a biker reject.”
“You!”
Nightwing gave a bark of laughter, even as there was a distinctive twing and whir of metal line that anyone raised in Gotham knew. Red Hood barreled past. “We’ll discuss it later, Liz! Get back here!”
That was fine, she had information to look up and her uncle to convince to bring her cool gang stuff so she could test everything. Three or four times of course, if not more, she had to collect a significant sample size after all…