Chapter Text
Red Hood was in a warehouse in the middle of a firefight one Friday night. He ducked behind a crate as he reloaded. He was aiming nonlethally since he’d been trying to reserve lethal force for only the worst of the worst, these were just drug dealing thugs. He’d actually hoped to recruit some of them, but that didn’t work out. They were one of the smaller gangs that is currently affiliated with Black Mask, moving both conventional drugs and the more experimental ones he’d been developing. He’d also learned that some of Scarecrow’s former henchmen were working for Black Mask now, which explained their increase in chemistry prowess.
Anyways, he was in a firefight. He was admittedly a bit outnumbered, especially since he was aiming for nonlethal damage which made it a bit harder to take people down. He peeked out and shot a few more thugs in the kneecaps, downing them. One had snuck up on him and shot him in the back, it didn’t pierce the body armor he was wearing but it would bruise like a bitch; he quickly turned and shot the man in the stomach, which was…technically a survivable wound. There were still a dozen thugs scattered around the room.
Suddenly a figure in blue and black crashed through the skylight. Nightwing started taking out thugs with merciless efficiency as he used his electrified escrima. Red Hood darted out and shot a few more thugs in the knees, he had to carry his weight. He was sure to cover Nightwing’s back, shooting a man in the stomach who had been aiming a gun at Nightwing. Between the two of them, they quickly downed the rest of the thugs.
Nightwing went through the warehouse zip-tying the criminals and disarming them. He stopped to apply a pressure bandage on the two who’d been shot in the stomach to try and prevent them from bleeding out. While he was doing this, Red Hood quickly went to the office to copy the files.
“I’ve called an ambulance, the cops will likely come as well to arrest them,” Nightwing informed him. Red Hood finished downloading stuff and nodded.
“I should get out of here, then. Meet you on the roof under my favorite gargoyle if you want to debrief,” Red Hood said before leaving, grappling away.
Red Hood reached the roof he had indicated, lurking in the shadows. A few minutes later, he saw Nightwing grappling towards him.
Nightwing landed, “Are you injured? I saw you get hit,” he asked concernedly.
“I’m fine, just bruised, didn’t pierce my armor,” Red Hood replied.
“So, debrief?” Nightwing asked.
“It was a smaller gang that’s separate from Black Mask but which has been working for him, I was trying to recruit them out from under him, lessen his power base, you know, but apparently they’re loyal, making a lot of money on this new Oblivion or whatever its called drug and they weren’t inclined to quit that. Ended up turning into a fight, there were more of them than I expected,” Red Hood explained.
Nightwing frowned, “I thought you were stopping criminals, not recruiting them.”
“Well, the idea is there’s always going to be drugs, if I can control it and ensure the drugs are clean and they aren’t dealing to kids, then it makes things safer. Also, I try to shift a lot of my people to more legal jobs when I can, to try and break them out of the cycle of crime, to actually rehabilitate them since clearly throwing them in prison doesn’t actually do that,” Jay argued.
Nightwing nodded in consideration, “Any intel on Oblivion? We’ve done chemical analysis on some of the samples but there’s a few variants, we haven’t gotten much on their distribution yet.”
“Well, it looks like Black Mask has hired some of scarecrow’s former henchmen, some people who actually know chemistry, and they’ve been behind helping with the drug. Black Mask himself has gone to ground because he’s a fucking coward who won’t fight me, so don’t know about him but he’s clearly still controlling his operations. I know they’ve been trying to brand Oblivion as a date rape drug and sell it around the college campuses, which really pisses me off, I want to stop it. I think it’s a lesser variant that they’re using for distribution, they’ve got a stronger variant that they’re using to try and brainwash people to make them more valuable when trafficked. I think they might be incorporating some effects of fear toxin in that variant to brainwash people into being fearfully compliant,” Red Hood informed him.
“That’s good intel, and it makes sense with some of the chemical analyses we’ve done. We’ve got a few proto-type antidotes that are being tested from the clinic when people come in, but we haven’t got a surefire one yet,” Nightwing said, “Well, they had a lot of product in that warehouse, getting that shutdown will help reduce the supply.”
“In theory, except you turn it over to the cops and half of them are crooked and end up selling the product back to the criminals,” Red Hood grumbled. Nightwing winced, knowing it was likely true. “Well, nice seeing you, I should be going.”
“See you around,” Nightwing said in farewell, sounding kind of wistful. Red Hood went back to his safehouse, he had work to do, going through all that data he’d acquired.