Archive of Our Own

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When Talia al Ghul called in the favor she had owed Alex for nearly a decade, Alex was incredibly surprised. For people like them, favors were currency, and they were worth more in the having than the calling in.

That Talia called it in on behalf of someone else was unthinkable.

But it wasn't Alex's to reason why. Alex simply had to set up a Bat-proof ID for a League persona non grata, and find him a place to set up a base of operations. "He'll tell you the rest," Talia said shortly. "And he'll pay you adequately."

"He best," Alex said tartly. "I don't work for free."

Talia scoffed, and hung up without saying anything else.

Alex cleaned the office meticulously, well beyond normal, because League of Assassins operatives, refugee or not, always read people's spaces, and Alex would rather Talia's pet project infer 'paranoid neat freak' than anything actually true.

He was young. He didn't quite fidget standing before Alex's desk, but he was still sort of visibly not-fidgeting, rather than actually being at ease.

Alex looked him over through narrowed eyes. "Talk."

The kid—and if he was older than eighteen, Alex would eat that tatty leather jacket he was wearing—shifted. There wasn't anything overt in the movement of his shoulders or hands, but he still gave off the impression of a soldier shifting from attention to at-ease. "I'm taking over Crime Alley," he said.

Alex didn't not bother to suppress an absolutely incredulous expression.

The kid bristled, and his eyes turned from unusual teal to acid green. But he didn't actually snap, which was impressive from someone who'd apparently taken a dip in Ra's al Ghul's poison spa.

But Alex owed Talia for reasons best left redacted, so personal feelings aside, Alex would do this thing. "What name do you want on the ID?"

Some of the green bled away, though his eyes were still more green than blue. "Jamison Howe," he said. Then he tossed over manila envelope. "Everything's there."

Alex cracked the brad. It was astute, to not offer a thumb drive that could just as easily contain malware as the necessary information.

The background was neat, with a slight flare for theatricality but not as much as might be expected from someone tangled up in the al Ghuls and the Bats, even if that entanglement took the form of avoidance rather than allyship. It contained everything Alex would have asked for, and some details that were not really necessary, but it did paint an interesting picture of the boy.

Alex looked over the packet back at the newly-christened Jamison. "Talia said you need office space." Off his nod, Alex continued, "What do you need?"

"I mean," he said awkwardly. "Owned by someone else and therefore not traceable to me would be my ideal." He shrugged. "Office space. Medium equipment storage, something I can enforce into an armory."

Alex pondered. This building fit all of those criteria, including a ground-floor office which was already reinforced and could be easily upgraded into an armory for anything short of vehicle-mounted rockets. The warehouse floor had a mezzanine with three closed rooms and a robust catwalk system between, and the top floor of office suites had a separate entryway and stairwell, so Alex's workspace could easily be cordoned off from whatever the boy was doing. Alex owned the space, through a shell company that Oracle might have traced—they liked to practice on each other's systems, Alex and Oracle, but neither had actually breached the other, though it was a toss-up whether that was a skill issue or professional courtesy—but certainly no one else had, and Alex would happily accept further cash income, even from a would-be crime lord.

The boy stood patiently while Alex considered all the ins and outs of such a business proposition. "All right," Alex said finally. "Here's what's going to happen."

Jamison's green eyes sharpened, and he honed in sharply, all focus and intent. Suddenly, Alex believed he might do as he intended.

And that, Alex supposed, was that.

That was not that.

To Alex's entire bewilderment, Jamison came back.

He sent a polite email a week later asking to "come up" with an information request. Alex's policy was to not accept shared files—that way trojans laid—and he had a background he wanted checked.

When Alex okayed the visit, Jay—as he asked to be called, although Alex was aware the streets were already calling him Red Hood for the helmet which had made its first appearance three days prior—arrived with coffee exactly the way Alex liked it, the first month's rent in cash, and a shitty cellphone picture of one of the Maroni's low-level enforcers. Dursun "Turk" Balik had apparently made himself interesting to the Alley's new crime lord.

The next time, he had pastries from the cafe three blocks down, and a cell phone he wanted spoofed.

The time after that, there was still blood on his gloves, but he'd been careful not to smear it on the drink carrier or the post-it with the phone number he wanted tapped.

He paid above Alex's usual rate, and cleaned up after himself—literally and metaphorically—and was basically an ideal tenant. He never expected deference or preference, and he never once threw his weight or tried to intimidate.

Still, Alex didn't quite realize that he was important until the day he walked across a security camera accompanied by one of Black Mask's favorite mercenaries.

Alex stared at the footage for a long moment, and then withdrew the flashbang that lived on the underside of the pencil-drawer. Jay would owe big for this.

He was in the Hood, which Alex had not yet seen in person. He still noticed Alex immediately, so it clearly didn't impact his peripheral vision much. "Alex," he said, and the helmet clearly had a vocodor built in, by the way his voice flattened and crackled.

"He works for Mask," Alex said, holding the flashbang tightly. It was, in fact, a guess, but it was an educated one, and if Alex turned out to be wrong, it would be the first time.

Hood, to his credit, didn't ask for clarification, and he didn't ask for proof. He drew a gun and spun on the merc with kind of terrifying speed.

Stingray opened his mouth to argue for one second, and then decided he was burned anyway, and swung for Hood with a knife he produced from somewhere.

Alex watched, poised with the flashbang, but Hood seemed to have the fight well in hand. He disarmed Stingray and then almost casually shot the merc in the left knee and right shoulder.

"Turk," he said, past Alex and into the warehouse. "Take him, you know Lou Barber's warehouse, in the Narrows?"

Turk came out of the shadows. "Yeah, Boss," he said. His gaze skittered nervously over Alex, and then fixed on Stingray.

"Leave 'im on the loading dock. Barber'll notify Mask."

Turk nodded. "If he bleeds out?"

Hood shrugged. "Tie a tourniquet, if you're worried about the mess."

"Yeah, Boss," Turk said, and took over the mewling mercenary.

Hood dismissed them both from his attention, turning back to Alex. "I owe you," he said easily, like that wasn't the kind of offer sane men didn't make carte blanch to people like Alex.

Alex, contrary to every bit of good sense, said, "Pay me back by letting me vet your new-hires."

Hood's stillness was surprise. He held it for three breaths longer than was comfortable, and then he said, "Come into my office. We can work up a contract."

And Alex followed.

Turk

Turk knew what the others said about him, dark looks and dire mutterings, and judgment, but he'd never had a bone broken by a Bat, and he intended to keep it that way.

So what if he'd had six bosses in four years? It wasn't like henching required a resume. No one asked about the gaps in your work history, and if they asked why you left your previous job, "Batman" was an answer that required no follow-ups—even if it maybe should.

So Turk had bailed on jobs when things got dicey. He was big, and he was well trained, and he didn't flinch at taking hits from normal people. He could always find more work.

And currently Franco Santoro, Maroni's chief lieutenant, saw the value in having someone big who'd keep their mouth shut walking at his shoulder. So Turk walked at his shoulder, scowled menacingly, kept his mouth shut, and ignored everything.

Franco was an asshole, but that wasn't anything new. He postured at Turk, and he snarled at everyone, and he slapped the few girls who liked either his money or his influence enough to get close. Turk kept him safe, because it was a paycheck, nothing more.

But things had been shifting in the Alley for a few days, maybe two weeks. Turk could smell the change in the metaphorical wind, and he was considering seeing if there was work in Tricorner. That might almost be far enough from whatever was about the fall out. The new player in the Alley was calling himself by the Joker's old name, and that was enough to tell Turk it was time to be somewhere else, even if the Red Hood hadn't yet done anything except stop a few muggings and send a very threatening letter to every gang boss in the Bowery.

Perhaps Turk would tender his resignation tomorrow. For tonight, he followed Franco to the back office in the club where he preferred to do his accounting, and stationed himself with his back against the door, settling in for a boring evening.

It was not a boring evening.

Turk had been guarding the door for half an hour when the power cut. There were several screams. Then emergency lighting kicking on, and Turk could hear the bouncers calmly evacuating the club.

In the shadows between the emergency lights, a red gleam padded down the hallway like a stalking beast.

Turk's shoulders hit the door he was guarding, gun raised in trembling hands.

Red Hood stood before him, helmet impassive in the dim light. "Move," he said. His voice was flat, crackling, ominous.

Turk moved. It wasn't a thought, in that moment, although afterwards he would trace this moment over and over in his mind, picking apart the fear, the shock, and the trembling gratitude of the reprieve.

In the moment, he absolutely simply turned tail and fled, and left Franco to his fate.

That that fate was to have his severed head put in a bag and delivered to Maroni and the other gang leaders of the Bowery was something Turk would not learn for another two days. He spent the first absolutely hiding out in his apartment, because if Franco was dead (and it was entirely improbable in Turk's experienced opinion that someone bearing the name Red Hood, who had cut power to a busy club specifically to get access to Franco would then leave him alive), Turk absolutely needed the Maroni's to think he was too, even if there was no body.

But on the second day, Turk ventured to the EZmart because his cupboard was well and truly bare, and saw the headlines all over the magazine display.

"Something, isn't it?" the woman at the register said knowingly.

Turk shrugged. "Couldn't've happened to nicer guys, I figure," he said dryly. Franco, at least, wouldn't leave behind any mourners. Not even his mother had liked him.

"There's that," she said. "Reckon he means it?"

"What?" Turk asked.

"Oh," the woman said. She nodded at the Gotham Gazette, which at first glance was the only paper not splashing the duffel bag of heads across the front page.

'Red Hood's Ultimatum: His Alley, His Rules,' the Gazette read.

Turk bought the paper, along with his pot noodle (that last paycheck was definitely not coming through).

Red Hood's rules for the Alley were simple: no selling drugs to kids, no hurting the working girls, innocents get left alone. Turk scoffed aloud to the audience of his empty apartment. Pretty ideals, he thought, and didn't think about the hollow space in his chest.

Turk kind of figured, Maroni had enough on his plate that he wouldn't likely be worried about Turk, in the grand scheme of things. He didn't want to look for a new apartment, and he definitely didn't want to commute to Tricorners, so he didn't end up leaving the Alley.

He needed to find a new job, though, so he set out to case the usual hench-hangouts, see who was hiring, and who wasn't going to be making waves.

Everyone was keeping their heads down, though, and Turk wasn't having much luck.

He left his third dive bar of the afternoon, rounded the corner, and wound up in the middle of a standoff. He froze, and they were so caught up in themselves that they didn't immediately see him.

Red Hood was standing, shoulders curled down but body loose, in the middle of a ring of Golden Dragons. He had a pistol in each hand, pointers easy on the trigger-guards, and the Hood bowed low. "You sure about this, boys," his flat, mechanized voice asked.

"Lynx doesn't like your terms," one said. "Die."

Hood lifted his head. "Your funeral," he said, and started shooting.

Once again, Turk didn't think. After, he spent hours trying to trace the decision. After, he would never be able to explain the thing that seized his heart and made him grab the nearest Golden Dragon and slam his head into the alley wall.

He got hands on a second before the gang realized there was another combatant, and then it got very messy very quickly.

Turk tried to keep himself to the edge of the battle. Red Hood was powering through Dragons with his guns and the kind of hand-to-hand skills that Turk associated with Major Rogues or Bats, not street-level thugs. The Dragons, despite superior numbers, were losing badly, and likely would have even without Turk's intereference.

Turk slammed another head into the dumpster, and came up and around to the heart-stopping terror of a gun pointed at his center mass from five yards away. Turk braced, no way to dodge, no way to stop it.

Red Hood swung between at the last moment, took the shoot high in the chest, and shot the Dragon almost as an afterthought.

The alley fell quiet, and Turk leaned on the dumpster, panting.

Red Hood paced among the Golden Dragons, nudging people with his boot till he found someone conscious. "Tell Lynx it wasn't an offer. It was an order," he said. Then he looked at Turk.

Turk froze, like a deer in headlights, equally certain of his doom.

"You all right?" Red Hood asked.

Turk nodded jerkily.

Red Hood pointed at his left arm. "Blood," he said.

Turk looked at it, belated. He had a knife slash on his forearm. "Shallow," he decided.

Red Hood grunted. "Come on," he said.

Turk followed, not entirely sure what he was expecting.

What he got was six neat stitches, done by deft, gloved hands, with a massive, well-stocked first aid kit, kept in a clearly marked box beside the reinforced, keypad-locked door of what was almost certainly an armory. This was clearly a base of operations of some kind. Turk was sat at a big table, just off a kitchenette, surrounded by whiteboards. Much of the space was still cordoned off with plastic sheeting, some kind of construction work paused.

He'd been left, ordered to sit there and not move, with a firmly pointed hand and a mechanized growl that Turk had no idea how to read. So he sat, and didn't move, and he tried not to wonder what was about to happen to him.

After perhaps the longest fifteen minutes of Turk's life, Red Hood appeared almost from nowhere and settled in the chair directly across the table from Turk.

Turk startled. There was no way someone that big, wearing that much armor, should be that quiet. "Uh," he said quietly.

Red Hood settled a folder silently on the table between them. Turk left his hands in his lap, and looked at the crime lord.

"You actually go by Turk," Red Hood asked inexplicably, "Or it one of those pejoratives that somehow stuck?"

Turk had given up every inch of his heritage, except the name. "Actual nickname," he said hoarsely. What the fuck was happening?

Red Hood nodded. "Turk," he said slowly. "How would you like a job?"

Turk stared at the flat, white eyes. Then he dropped his gaze to the scuff on the reinforced jacket, where the bullet aimed at his chest had instead impacted. Something swelled, behind his breastbone. "Yeah, Boss," he said.

Red Hood opened the folder, and spun it to face him.

A contract. A contract, Turk thought, eyes widening as he read, with really fair terms, and excellent benefits. Turk gaped at it.

Red Hood waited patiently as Turk flipped pages, goggling more and more. When Turk was done, when Turk looked up to stare, bewildered, up at Red Hood instead of the incredible, impossible contract, Red Hood silently held out a pen.

Turk signed, and for the first time ever it didn't feel like signing away his soul.

Gladys

Gladys had worked this street corner for thirty years. To be fair, she almost never stood on the corner anymore; she didn't take new clients, and her longstanding regulars all had her google voice number. She spent most nights in Rendon's office, doing the books he never bothered to do.

Rendon considered his role as the biggest pimp in the Alley as second to and separate from his role as second in command of the Sprang Bridge Soldiers, never mind that he'd never have become the latter if he hadn't been the former.

It didn't matter; it meant Gladys could keep the books, and protect the girls, and bear the brunt of Rendon's annoyance, when things didn't go quite right.

But Rendon hadn't come in at all the night before, for the first time in the decade he'd been running the Alley girls, and the girls had been nervous about the new player.

So Gladys was on the street tonight, checking in with the girls, walking the alleys.

Cherie signaled her to stay, and then finished her conversation with a prospective john. Cherie had taken the new girl, Anamaria, under her wing, and Cherie shooed Anamaria off with the john, and then came over the Gladys.

"Rendon's dead," Cherie said quietly.

Gladys raised both eyebrows. "Don't get my hopes up, girl," she said.

Cherie shook her head. "I'm serious. The new guy, the one calling himself Red Hood."

Gladys spat.

Cherie shrugged. She wasn't old enough to remember the Joker under that name, but Gladys did. "He beheaded the second in command of all the gangs in the alley, and called the gang heads together, and delivered the heads in person."

"Jesus Christ," Gladys said.

"Good riddance," Cherie said.

Gladys hummed agreement. "Long as the next one isn't worse," she said.

Cherie only shrugged again, and went back to her corner as a car slowed down.

Gladys continued her rounds, making a mental note to swing back around the check on Anamaria.

The girls were nervous, unsettled, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but they did the work as usual, and squeezed Gladys' hands for comfort. Cherie wasn't the only one to talk to her about the duffle bag of heads, and several more mentioned Red Hood's ultimatum against hurting the working girls. Gladys would believe that when she saw it. But they were okay for now.

Gladys was on her way back to Cherie's corner when a shadow moved in the gloom.

Red Hood was big, bigger than Rendon, bigger than her ex-husband. He moved like smoke, and his white eyes pierced. "You're in charge here," he said.

Gladys considered this. She shrugged. "I keep the books," she said. "And I know the girls."

Red Hood's head inclined. He was still ten feet away, slouched against the wall, hands loose on his thighs. "What do you need?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, sharper than she intended, but he'd surprised her.

He slouched further. "Plan B?" he asked. "Lubricant? Condoms? Hotel rooms?" His shoulders rolled in a tense shrug. "What do you need?"

"You're taking over for Rendon," she realized.

White eyes stared blankly. "The shithead pimp," he said after a moment, with the air of a realization, even with the inflection flattened out of his mechanical voice. "Yes," he answered. "No," he said after a moment. "You are taking over for Rendon."

Gladys stared at him. "What."

Hood rolled to his feet. "Here," he said, finally coming in arm's reach to hold out a business card. "Text that number tomorrow, and I'll arrange a meeting so we can talk salary and benefits. Talk with the girls, put together a list of demands. We'll negotiate then."

Then he vanished into the night, leaving Gladys staring after him, wondering what on earth he thought she had to negotiate with. She had a sinking feeling it was the girls.

Two days later, Hood invited her to his headquarters, and when she politely declined, he offered to meet her instead at her office, and when this too she declined, he asked her where.

He met her obligingly on Cherie's corner, and followed her deeper into the alley behind the motel, to the sofa that had been trashed a year ago, and conveniently never picked up by the sanitation crews (most of whom knew, or "knew," Cherie).

Rather than sit beside them, Hood settled into a crouch on his heels, some five feet from Gladys and Cherie. He offered a folder. "Front one's a sample contract," he said. "We'd work them up individually, but the hourly and the benefits are the same across the board. It's just the job expectations up for negotiation." He rocked briefly, shifting his weight from heel to toe and back. Then he settled, lifting his piercing gaze from the pavement to actually look at them. "Next one's for Gladys, as management," he said. "Third is the full benefit package, in detail."

Cherie reached for the benefits package, leaving Gladys to read her proposed job duties. It was baffling. It laid out nightly check ins, ensuring the good health of the girls, being secondary emergency contact for them, gave her purchasing power for supplies, negotiating power with the motel and other entities, and left open the possibility of establishing a base of operations, if they ever wanted to incorporate into a brothel.

"Your cut's too small," Cherie said.

The red helmet tilted. "What makes you say that." The vocodor had a strange way of flattening his questions. Or maybe that was just him.

Cherie scoffed. "You can't support these benefits on a five percent cut."

Five percent? Gladys goggled. She hadn't gotten there yet. Rendon had take thirty. "How are you funding this?"

"Drugs mostly," Hood said flatly. "Also guns."

Cherie stilled.

"Five percent is paying for the health insurance," Hood said. "I'm not taking a cut, it's going to your benefits, and tax withholding. That's how benefits work." He rocked forward onto his toes, reached the awkwardly far distance still between his broad shoulders and the folder in Gladys' lap, and turned back to the sample contract. "You'll notice the five percent benefits is coupled with a three percent, well," he shrugged, rolling back to his heels and dropping his elbows back to his thighs. "We're calling it union membership, but it pays into a pool that Gladys will have access to in order to fund needs. Her discretion, but it's intended for things like the motel rooms, plan b, and a supply pool, so you don't have to buy condoms and lubricant out of pocket."

"What the fuck," Cherie said quietly.

Hood looked at Gladys. "If you prefer to keep working out of Rendon's old office, I'm sure I can arrange to acquire the building, but there would be office space for you at our headquarters, if that's amenable, or you'd be welcome to source your own space."

Before Gladys could try to find an answer to that, there was a scuffle at the mouth of the alley.

The first thing to come through clearly was Keira snapping, "She said no, asshole!"

The next was a cry of pain. "Listen, whore," a male voice snarled.

Before Gladys could react, the Red Hood had rolled to his feet, a great spring uncoiling. He strode towards the pool of light ten yards away and hauled a man by the hair into the circle of the streetlight.

Anamaria and Kiera followed, huddled close together. Anamaria had a swelling bruise already coming in on her face.

Red Hood jammed the barrel of the pistol underneath the man's chin. "She said no," he said, and the flatness of the vocoder was suddenly terrifying in its coldness.

The man was stuttering too hard to get a complete sentence out, but even from down the alley, Gladys heard the phrase, "no better than she should be."

Red Hood hauled him off balance, still holding his hair, and then shoved him away. As the man flailed for balance and nearly fell, Hood's gun barrel dropped, and shot the man straight in the dick.

Keira hastily pulled Anamaria around so she wouldn't look.

"No's a whole sentence, asswipe," Hood snarled, kicking the squalling man in the knee, tumbling him to the ground. He turned, and his shoulders dropped, gun vanishing into its holster. "Are you all right?" he asked the girls. His body blocked the sight of the man, but his voice couldn't block his wailing.

"We're okay," Keira said, chin up bravely, still holding Anamaria against her side.

"Good," Hood said. He had fast hands, Gladys thought, because she couldn't see how he did it, but suddenly he was holding out a folded collection of cash. "Take an hour, both of you. Go get something to eat or drink, take a breath."

Keira darted a look down at Cherie and Gladys. Gladys nodded deliberately. Keira reached out, taking the money hesitantly.

Just like with the folder, Hood leaned himself off balance to get his hand in her reach while keeping his body as far away as he could. This was a man who knew exactly how intimidating he was, and actively tried to mitigate it when he wasn't using it.

As the girls scampered down the street towards the all-night diner, Hood sighed down at the whimpering man at his feet. "Turk, call an ambulance. Male, mid-thirties, they should hurry."

He had a phone built into his helmet, Gladys realized.

"My location, yeah," Hood said. Gladys almost wished she had inflection, because his next sentence was really something even without it: "Gunshot wound, what do you think is wrong with him?" He stalked back down the alley towards them. "Just get them here." He dropped down into his crouch again, safely out of reach. "Sorry," he said. "I should've dragged him around the corner. Girls didn't need to see that."

Gladys opened her mouth, and then closed it again.

"I for one think Anamaria will sleep better tonight, having seen that," Cherie said.

Hood's helmet inclined. "You know her and I don't," he said. "I'll take your word." He pointed at the folder, still in Gladys' lap. "What do you think?"

Gladys was going to sign on. Because even if it was too good to be true (and it was almost certainly too good to be true), it would still, hopefully, give her the chance to keep herself between Hood and the girls.

"I'm in," Cherie said. "If Gladys is."

Hood's sharp white eyes focused on her. "I can give you time," he said after a moment of silence. "But if you're going to say no, I'd like you to say it sooner so I have time to try to find a replacement." His shoulders moved in what seemed to be a silent huff. "Don't suppose you'd be interested, if she says no?" he asked Cherie.

"Hell no," Cherie said cheerfully.

"I'm not going to say no," Gladys said. "But I have demands."

"Name them," Hood said.

"Your men pay for the girls, same as anyone," Gladys said.

"Upcharge them," Hood said.

"What?" Cherie blurted. Gladys held it in, but only barely.

"If one of my men tries to get favors just because he works for me, upcharge him," Hood said, shrugging. "And if one of mine lays hands on one of yours without negotiation and proper compensation, I expect to be notified."

"You gonna shoot them in the dick too?" Cherie asked snidely.

"Yes," Hood said, and seemed surprised by their surprise. "What else?" he asked Gladys.

"No more underage girls."

Hood went dangerously still. "Never," he snarled. "Are there-?" he didn't seem to be able to get the words out.

"Anamaria's eighteen," Cherie said. "She's our youngest right now. But Rendon was after her little sister."

Hood seemed to be box breathing.

Gladys made a note that he had a temper.

"I killed that motherfucker too slow," Hood snarled, and he didn't seem entirely aware of them as an audience. He shook himself, visibly, and tipped his head back to them. "Clients too. Eighteen or older."

"We don't card," Cherie said slowly.

"You do now," Hood said. "If you need to."

Gladys nodded. "We'll see to it," she promised quickly.

Hood's shoulders lowered slowly. "What else?"

Gladys and Cherie exchanged a glance. "For now, that'll do."

Hood nodded. "I'll write it up," he said. "I'll eventually want contracts on file with all the girls, so compensation can be kept square, but you can handle that once you're settled in your new role," he told Gladys. "Your contract I'll have ready tomorrow. Do you want me to meet you here again?" He glanced around. "I'll bring a clipboard."

"I'll come to your office tomorrow," Gladys decided. Something in her trusted him already, even if she had also determined to stay on guard for the sake of the girls.

Ross

 Ross wasn't an idiot. Lot of suppliers thought he was, but Ross was still here, and most of them were in Blackgate, or Gotham Harbor.

Picking the heart of Crime Alley as his territory sounded like career suicide to most low-level dealers, but Ross had known better. These had been his streets since he was a rat in the storm drain, supplying his senior class with uppers so they could get through exams.

The judge who gave him the choice between prison or the army obviously thought Ross was going to learn something. But Ross knew nobody needed uppers more than soldiers in combat.

He'd done his duty, and come home to the Alley. And everyone thought this was a no man's land of rapid death, so Ross had settled in and built his client base, and smiled when all the suppliers, from the Russians to the Mexicans to the Italians, said he was crazy.

But he wasn't crazy, and he wasn't an idiot, so when the new crime lord parked himself squarely in Ross's territory and declared that there were going to be rules about what could be sold and to whom, Ross squared up, demanded legal identification from all his clients he couldn't verify were over eighteen, and cut loose the three kids he'd been selling to for the last three months.

They sulked, but Ross liked his head on his shoulders, and Hood's demands had been made very clear.

Red Hood had been undisputed king of Crime Alley for exactly one week, and Ross had been hearing all kinds of things. Some made perfect sense: apparently he'd slaughtered an entire warehouse of human traffickers trying to sell homeless kids into slavery in Venezuela. Apparently he'd stolen an entire shipment of automatic rifles from Black Mask. Apparently he'd taken over more than half the heroin trade in the whole city.

Some of it made less sense. Apparently he'd shot a man in the dick for touching a hooker. Apparently he'd made some kind of deal with the street kids, and they spied for him. Apparently his goons got full health insurance.

Apparently he'd come to check Ross out.

Ross pressed his back against the wall and locked his knees.

Red Hood stalked out of the dusk shadows and stopped six feet away with his arms crossed over his broad chest. "You Ross?" he asked, and the mechanized voice made Ross' nape prickle.

"That's me," Ross agreed hoarsely.

"Kendrick Thompson-Woods."

Ross's throat worked. "Former client," he said promptly. "Came to me four days ago, I used to see him about every other week, so it was the first time since your new rules, so I asked for an ID. He's sixteen, so I turned him away."

Red Hood stared at him impassively.

Ross smothered the urge to babble. He could feel the fear-sweat sliding down his spine.

"He overdosed yesterday," Red Hood said.

Ross braced himself. "Wasn't me," he gritted out.

"Who was it," Red Hood asked.

Ross considered. Kendrick lived two blocks east of Park Row Middle School, and was trying desperately to get the Sprang Bridge Soldiers to notice him, so he tended to run south and east. He came to Ross because Ross was one of the few dealers in the Bowery who would get the high schoolers ritalin or adderall, but when Ross turned him away, he would've turned to either Conroy or Georges. But if he overdosed, he probably upgraded too fast to an amphetamine, and that would've been Conroy.

"Elijah Conroy," Ross said. "He works off Crown Point."

"How do you know."

Ross took a deep breath. "Kendrick was buying adderall from me," he said. "Only other dealer of Adderall in the Bowery is Frankie Georges, but if he od'd he probably swapped to meth, because Conroy is closer to his neighborhood. Frankie runs Logerquist Acres, and Kendrick lives off Coach."

The helmet remained impassive, white eyes pinning Ross in place. Red Hood was silent for a long time. "You know all your buyers like that," he asked after a moment. The mechanization had a kind of terrifying way of stripping every bit of inflection out of the cold voice. Ross had no idea what the man was thinking.

"Yes," Ross said.

"You know all the other dealers."

Ross shrugged one shoulder. "Falcone's people shot the guy who was running the border of Robbinsville and I've seen the new guy but don't know him, but pretty much, yeah."

"Where do you get your product?" This one, somehow, was clearly a question, rather than a flat statement. So he could emote through the vocoder, he just mostly didn't.

"Depends on the product," Ross said honestly. "Cocaine mostly moves through the Mexicans, though the trade's changed cartels three times in a decode, and heroin now comes through your people, though I haven't needed a top up since you took it over."

"Prescription drugs," Hood demanded.

Ross swallowed. "Triads hit the pharmaceutical shipments for Gotham General, sell to everyone in Uptown."

Hood nodded slowly. "Weed?" There was, perhaps, something a little dry in the mechanized tone now.

Ross slowly felt his spine easing against the wall. Hood didn't seem to be about to murder him for not liking his answers. "Penguin's taken over a warehouse that was Ivy's first, grows the only product worth buying in bulk."

"You test your product?" Hood said. He'd dropped his arms from the imposing cross to tuck his hands into the pockets of his already-infamous leather jacket.

"When I can get kits," Ross admitted. "GCPD cracked down on those far more successfully than any actual drugs, so trying to get them en masse is a quickest way to an arrest for possession with intent to sell."

Red Hood hummed quietly, the vocoder projecting it as a low buzz of static. The he nodded once, and vanished into the shadows again.

Ross closed his eyes, leaned on the wall, and breathed.

Three weeks into Red Hood's reign in the Alley, Ross was sold.

Red Hood had cracked down on the imports of all drugs into the Alley, and splattered two dealers across various alleyways to make his point. No dealing to kids, no adulterated product, and absolutely no reusing needles.

Access to clean paraphernalia was suddenly easier. Access to test kits was suddenly possible. Somehow, Red Hood had bypassed the GCPD crackdown, and was methodically and personally making using in the Alley as safe as it could be.

So when Red Hood appeared again out of the shadows, Ross didn't press himself back into the wall this time. He stepped away from his suddenly terrified current client (Esther Alonzo, single, 35, living with sister and brother-in-law as live-in childcare for their three under-tens; chronic pain from a birth defect of the leg which had never gotten the medical intervention it needed) and looked to his patron. "Me or her, Boss?" he asked.

"You," Hood agreed, tipping the terrifying helmet back further away from Esther.

Ross followed obligingly. "What do you need?"

Hood regarded him in silence for a moment. "A distributor," he said finally.

Ross stared at him blankly. "Sorry, what?" he said.

Hood shrugged, leaning back into the wall and crossing his arms. "Apparently I'm a drug lord now," he said, and the vocoder flatened his voice, but his body language was borderline sheepish. "So. I need upper management."

"And you came to me?" Ross asked. "I'm- I mean, frankly I'm a nobody, Boss." He gestured around. "This is only my territory because nobody else fuckin' wants it."

The vocoder made an ominous crackling noise, and Hood's left hand made a clear, 'go on' twirl.

Ross swallowed. "The gangs leave me alone because this place is a hellscape, Boss, but I've only lasted because of that."

"How many clients do you have in this hellscape, Ross?" Red Hood asked, head tilting back against the wall lazily.

"Sixty three," Ross said.

"And you know all their names," Red Hood said.

"I mean," Ross said. "I know a name, Scuttle obviously ain't on his driver's license and nobody's mama named Kung Pao that."

Hood inclined his helmet. "If you don't want it, I'll find someone else," he said. "But I think you're the best person for the job." He ticked off his gloved fingers. "You know your clients. You know the other dealers. You know territories and trends." He shrugged. "You have the knowledge I need, and the contact, and the organizational acumen."

Ross scoffed, "Boss I ain't organized my goddamn sock drawer, and you want me to, what, run an empire?"

"You hold all that info about your buyers in head?" Red Hood asked.

Ross shrugged. "Got notes, but mostly."

The tilt of Hood's helmet seemed to say, 'see?' What he said aloud, though, was, "And I don't give a flying fuck if your socks match."

Ross was startled into laughter. "Yeah, all right," he said after a moment. "I mean, I guess."

"Good," Hood said. "Come on."

Ross fell in at his shoulder. "Where we goin', Boss?"

"HQ," Hood said. "Get your paperwork set up, show you the setup. Welcome aboard."

Ross nodded. "Thanks Boss," he said quietly, and he didn't mean for the job.

Nan (And Robert)

Nan had worked for Dodson's Distributing for fifteen years, worked her way up from a driver, back in the days where women with CDL's were rarer than hen's teeth and Nan had to fight for every shift, sometimes literally, until now she was chief of operations.

Daniel Dodson had founded the company, and moved Nan from driving to logistics and paid for her training himself. He was a good man and a good boss, as well as a shrewd businessman and an incredibly talented truck driver. Until the day he'd died, he'd still been the person they'd called to drive a truck out of a tight spot. He'd left the company to his only son Franck, who was most notably an asshole.

When Red Hood took over the Alley, Nan and Robert, the night shift supervisor and her right hand man, figured he was an inevitability, since he was as nocturnal as they were.

Nan had not entirely expected that inevitability to resolve itself by Red hood throwing her boss off the roof of a speeding box truck.

The police—and Sherice Dodson, Franck's wife, primary victim, and the brains of the business decisions since Daniel had passed on the company—arrived at three in the morning, while Nan and Robert were working on the next night's shipping schedule and waiting for the call-ins from their last three drivers.

Sherice led the detective in charge of the operation into the office where Franck had kept the books. One officer prowled the loading floor, and the other came over to talk to Nan and Robert.

Robert was perfectly happy to talk about the abuse Franck spewed every time he talked to anyone, and mention the bruises Sherice never seemed to be able to cover. He even considered aloud the strange disparity in profit margin of the company and the success of its ventures, and Franck's tendency to wear flashy clothes and have a new car every six months or so.

Nan was warier, but when the detective came out of the office and asked Nan straight out of Franck had ever sexually harassed her or laid hands on her, Nan didn't bother to lie. She was out of his age bracket for harassment, thankfully, but he'd hit her four times in ten years.

Detective Montoya didn't do her the disservice of asking why she hadn't reported it. She only made a note on her notepad, and then looked back at Nan. "I want to put him away for as long as I possibly can," she said frankly. "Got anything else you can give me?"

Nan stared at the woman for a long moment, judging.

Montoya waited politely, head tilted in interest, eyes keen.

Nan nodded once, and said, "Follow me." Then she led the detectives down the stairs, and into the underground bunker, originally part of the defunct metro the city had tried for in the 80s before realizing it wouldn't work on a limestone island. Now, it housed the crates of black market beluga caviar Franck Dodson had sold on the side.

Montoya smiled a slow smile.

As Montoya and the officers seized and recorded the evidence, Sherice pulled Nan and Robert aside. "I've sold the company," she said.

Robert startled. Nan only nodded.

"I'm moving back to Metropolis, to my mother's," Sherice continued. "I've already arranged for the divorce papers to be delivered to him in lockup."

Nan nodded. "New owners?"

"Red Hood," Sherice said quietly. "He made a very compelling offer."

Nan and Robert exchanged a glance.

"I recommended he keep you two on," Sherice said softly. "I'm sorry. I- I didn't know what else to tell him."

"Everyone else?" Robert asked hoarsely.

Sherice shrugged. She withdrew a folder from her purse and handed it to Nan.

Nan glanced at it, and then set it on the desk without opening any of the documents. It was a bill of sale and all the asset transfer paperwork.

"Good luck," Sherice said tiredly, and followed Montoya back out to the parking lot.

Robert picked up the folder and started leafing through.

Nan stared at the map on the wall for a long time.

Just before four, when Nan had been in an hour, checking out with the cleaning crew, and Robert had just arrived to get the drivers' routes prepared for them, Nan looked up from the map and startled hard.

Red Hood, unmistakable for the red helmet, stood in the middle of the workspace.

Nan's startle made Robert shriek a little.

Red Hood stalked towards them. "You Nan and Robert?" he asked.

Robert nodded mutely.

Nan lifted her chin. "Yeah," she said. "And you're the new owner."

Red Hood nodded. "Sherice said you run this place."

"I'm chief of operations," Nan said flatly. "Robert's night shift supervisor."

"Who's day shift?"

"Mariah runs the cleaners and does the request spreadsheets, but technically it's me," Nan said.

"Why not Mariah?" Red Hood asked.

"Dodson wouldn't promote her," Robert said, while Nan searched for a more tactful way to say this. "Because she refused to sleep with him."

Red Hood was silent for a lingering moment. "Promote her," he said.

Nan wrote it on a sticky note.

The red helmet made a crackling noise which made Robert flinch. Nan shot Red Hood a flat look. He ignored her, starting a slow stalk around the workspace, touching notes and folders with his gloved fingertips, but not actively moving anything.

"Drivers all on the up and up?" Red Hood asked.

"Yes," Nan said.

"Except Tad," Robert said.

Red Hood paused his prowl around the office, and the helmet tilted towards Robert. "Tad," he repeated, a low crackle.

Asshole Tad, as everyone else called him, was Franck's favorite. He also had three DUIs on his civilian license that bribery had kept off his CDL. Nan had the proof in her desk, and she handed it to Hood without explaining.

He propped his hip on the table and looked through the papers unhurriedly. Then he set the folder down deliberately. "Do we need him?" he asked.

"No," Nan said promptly.

Robert shook his head.

"Fire him," Red Hood said.

Nan put it on her sticky note.

The helmet crackled again, and Nan, watching his chest and shoulders move, realized he was laughing. "You need anything?" Red Hood asked them.

Robert looked at Nan in bewilderment.

Nan looked around the warehouse, at their tatty pin-studded map and battered old workhorse forklifts and the rows of pallets covered in goods.

Red Hood silently followed her regard, taking in the warehouse as a whole. "It's good work done well," he said, flat and mechanized and yet somehow earnest.

"Been doing it ten years," Nan said.

Hood nodded. Then he rolled off the table he leaned on in a smooth ripple of his powerful frame, and set a business card beside her sticky note. "Let me know if you need anything."

"You're not- changing anything?" Robert blurted as Hood started to leave.

Hood looked back over his shoulder. "Why the fuck would I do that?" he asked. "I don't know the first thing about," he waved around. "Any of this. You've been doing it ten years." Those powerful shoulders shrugged. "Have at, call if you need." Then he vanished into the shadows, the last flash of his boots suggesting he'd gone up.

"What the fuck," Robert whispered.

Nan, however, was staring at the business card, and thinking about how even though he'd hired her and trained her to do it, not even Daniel had ever just trusted her to do her job.

Jenkins

Jenkins stood with his box on his hip and a buzzing in his ears. There was nothing. Nowhere to go. He couldn't even go sleep in his car, because GCC had finally impounded it, after he'd left it parked there six months after they'd let him go.

Everything he owned was in the box.

When the man in the red mask-helmet-thing stepped out of the alley and stopped in front of Jenkins, Jenkins only sighed; wasn't like the day could get significantly worse. "I don't have any money," he said.

"I'm not mugging you," the man said, and his mask-thing had some kind of voice changer or something in it, because it came out with a mechanical growl.

"Oh," Jenkins said. Then he looked at the sidewalk, and tried to step further backwards. Perhaps he was in the man's way?

But the red-helmeted stranger continued to stare at him out of white-light eyes. "Come with me," he said finally.

Jenkins shifted his box to the other hip, and followed. It was far easier than thinking of an alternative. And there was something almost careful about the man's posture and body language that despite his strange garb and menacing aspect, Jenkins was prone to trust.

"You got that?" the man asked, three blocks later, pointing at the box.

Jenkins held it closer protectively.

The man's hands went up in surrender, and then he tucked them in his jacket pockets. The jacket seemed to be reinforced in some way, plated almost like armor.

Jenkins followed the stranger into a run-down looking warehouse, which they accessed via a reinforced door with a keypad lock. A casual headtilt and flick of a glvoed hand gestured Jenkins to a big table off to one side, which his strange companion entered another code on another keypad, opened what was unmistakably an armory, and disarmed himself of about twice as many firearms as Jenkins had registered him carrying.

Jenkins put his box in one chair, and sat in the next one over, not sure what else to do.

"New friend, Boss?" a short, stocky man about his own age asked, leaning out of an office on the mezzanine, and shouting with ease and familiarity.

"Doc Jenkins," the man called back in his flat, mechanical buzz.

The new guy, dressed totally normally in jeans and a tattered hoodie, sauntered down the stairs from the mezzanine. "I'm Ross," he said, flashing a quick grin. "He tell you anything, or just drag you in off the street."

"I'm getting there," grumbled that mechanized voice, flat and emotionless and yet unmistakably a grumble.

"Sorry," Jenkins said finally. "Who. Are you people?"

"Boss!" Ross cried, throwing his hands up in dismay. He flopped into the chair across from Jenkins' box and set a sheaf of papers beside himself on the table. "Sorry, I think he must've been raised in a barn."

Boss settled in the chair across from Jenkins, and leaned back in a casual sprawl. If Jenkins was reading his body language correctly, he thought it might have been an attempt to loom less. "We're the Red Hood Gang," he said.

Jenkins looked between the two men. Red helmet tracked, he supposed, though Ross failed to uphold the theme. "Is that. Meant to mean something to me?" he asked finally.

Ross laughed brightly. "Nah, we're new," he said easily. "I mean, Boss's been making some big waves in the criminal element around here, but no reason for you to know us."

Criminal enterprise sounded more likely, now that Jenkins was in the thick of it. Armory, warehouse, covered face. Yes, this was definitely a gang. His presence made no sense, but Boss clearly knew who he was. "What am I doing here?" he asked quietly.

"You need a job," Boss said. "I have a vacancy, and a need for your skills."

Jenkins regarded him. "I'm a clinical psychologist?" he said. "And I've been teaching and not practicing for two years?"

Boss nodded deliberately.

"What could you possibly have need of me?" Jenkins wondered.

"It's Crime Alley," Ross said dryly. "Everyone needs help here." He jostled Boss with his shoulder. "Not the least the guy wearing a leather jacket and full face helmet in August in Gotham."

"Fuck off," Boss said.

"You want me to practice?" he blurted.

Boss sawed a hand. "You'd be welcome to," he said. "Won't interfere with what I need. But you worked for Gotham General for five years, and you worked closely with the social workers and the aid programs."

Jenkins nodded slowly. "Yes," he agreed.

Boss nodded. "Nobody else is doing it, so we're helping the Alley. I need help with what social programs exist and how to get people into them, and then what gaps exist and if it's possible for us to fill them."

Jenkins blinked at him. "You- what?"

Ross said, "We're helping people, any way we can. And we need someone who knows the system."

"Someone less threatening, who can talk to the ptas and church outreach committees and the food pantries," Boss added.

"Yeah," Ross said, jostling Boss's shoulder again. "Some reason they won't meet with Boss."

Boss ignored this jab, shuffling the papers Ross had brought down. Then he spun them to face Jenkins.

It was a job offer, Jenkins realized, looking at the words. In confusion, he picked up the papers, trying to make the words focus through his suddenly blurring eyes.

Nothing in the job description looked outside Jenkins' skillset, either. And the compensation packet was. Literally incomprehensible, after fifteen months of failed interviews and juggling between food and utilities. Housing stipend? Dental and vision insurance? Full medical. Bonuses for overtime. A frankly astounding salary.

Perhaps ten years ago, Jenkins would have considered if he cared that that salary came from criminal enterprise. Today, sitting next to the box of all his worldly possessions, with nowhere to go, Jenkins signed on the line without even thinking about it.

"Welcome aboard," Ross said warmly, flashing him a genuine grin.

"Do we- do we all call you boss, or-?" Jenkins asked the man in the helmet.

"Oh, shit," he said, and his posture turned sheepish, even if his mechanical voice stayed flat. "Red Hood. Hood'll do. These assholes call me boss because they know it annoys me."

Ross was openly laughing, head tilted back, kicking his feet a little in glee. "Oh," he sighed, "Oh wait till I tell Turk you didn't introduce yourself."

"Fuck off," Hood sighed. "Come on, Doc, we got a couple of apartments you can look at, see which one works for you."

Jenkins stared at his new boss, speechless.

Ross kicked his ankle very gently under the table. "Boss takes predatory landlords personal," he said easily. "So we've acquired some buildings at amazingly low cost. You'll have to help us clean them up, but at least the rent'll be fixed."

"I- I don't know- what to say," Jenkins stuttered.

"Well you already said yes," Ross said cheerfully. "So you may as well now say if you have a preference for which floor or how near the stairs your place is."

"Come on," Hood said again, but his posture was easy, gentle.

Ross patted his hand and scooped up his box for him. "It makes no goddamn sense right now," he said. "But in a few weeks, you'll get it," he promised.

Jenkins shook his head bewilderedly, and followed them back into the sunlight.