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The line between his territory and the rest of Gotham has always been very obvious to Red Hood, and him alone.
His patrol route along that dividing line was always exact. Red Hood stalked the boundary like he was following a high lighted line. Every turn was exact, Batman would hate that.
Never let yourself become predictable.
Becoming predictable leaves you vulnerable.
Red Hood seems to mostly be unpredictable in his patrol routes, except for when he stalked the boundary of his territory.
However, that doesn’t make him vulnerable. Red Hood tends to only be seen making that route when he wants to be seen, at least, as far as Tim could tell.
Despite having nearly been killed by the crime lord, Tim continued to return near his territory like a moth to a flame. It’s stupid, and Tim definitely is always on edge, but there’s something that just draws him in.
Obsessively, he tracks Red Hood as best he can without crossing that invisible line, and he notes everything down. This is a personal project of Tim’s, more so because he is well aware Batman would not approve.
Red Hood reminds Tim almost of the dogs from a fighting ring he broke up a while back. On the surface, bloodthirsty, teeth bared in a snarl and always ready to tear out someone’s throat.
In a way, Red Hood really is like that. Tim has seen the bodies of those who crossed Red Hood.
But there’s also a faint tension in his shoulders, hunched like he can’t decide whether to make himself smaller, or bigger.
He lashes out like if he doesn’t bite first, he’ll get bitten.
And it makes Tim curious.
No one knows who this crime lord is, no name, no face, not even DNA samples yet. He just lurks around Crime Alley like some sort of cryptid.
Not for lack of trying, they have definitely tried to find out who Red Hood is, have tried to get some kind of sample for DNA analysis, have tried to hunt him down through cameras, through anything they could get their hands on.
But Crime Alley seems allergic to technology, and when they try to sneak their own in, it ends up destroyed, or gets absolutely nothing worthwhile back. They had to stop sneaking in, because somehow, Red Hood always knew, and would begin hunting them down.
Whoever made Red Hood’s gear is some kind of insane mastermind, because for all Batman’s experience and prowess, and the way Red Hood fights like he couldn’t care less if he gets injured if it gives him the opportunity to take a chunk out of his enemy, they get nothing.
Whatever his outfit is made of, they can’t actually get any blood from him, it’s like it evaporates as soon as it leaves his body. But that can’t be possible, so it has to be whatever his suit is made of, absorbing any blood they could have gotten.
Due to his helmet, they can’t get any kind of hair or saliva. Tim’s fairly sure Red Hood has to be some kind of metahuman, with how quickly he bounces back from harsh injuries, his durability, stamina, and hell, Tim is very sure the guy has some kind of insane sensing ability.
There’s no explanation for how he had always found them. Attempts to get into Crime Alley through disguises doesn’t work, because the people in the Alley will not interact with anyone outside it.
Even in civilian disguises, Red Hood seems to sense they don’t belong, and the one time Tim snuck over to try his luck, he could feel Red Hood watching his every move. It’s not paranoia, Tim had seen Red Hood watching him from a roof top, because who else would lurk menacingly on a building almost out of eyesight for someone even with good vision.
They’ve taken to long term reconnaissance and slow probing attempts, because clashing head on just made both sides suffer, and unlike Red Hood, they took longer to heal and bounce back.
Plus, they avoided fatal attacks when they could, while Red Hood seemed to prefer to target vital spots, not hesitating to even aim for eyes or groins.
Insanity.
He’s insane, and Tim can’t believe this guy, who has no qualms hanging rival drug dealer’s bodies on streetlights, is in any way sound of mind. And yet, Tim still keeps digging into him.
Because he can’t unsee the image of a traumatized fighting dog.
Something inside him is so sure, so vehemently sure, that Red Hood for all the insanity he’s cloaked in, is a damaged man.
Though he is really good at hiding even his body’s natural reactions and body language, some things still slip through. It’s rare, but Tim has been obsessively watching Red Hood since he first showed up, he’s been cataloguing every single movement, flex, shift of the pinky finger.
He might not have slept in a long time, but Tim can’t rest with Red Hood existing. Red Hood is a complex puzzle, and every scrap of information only makes him more confusing.
Tim noted that there is a specific kind of severity Red Hood acts under. Depending on the person, on their crime, decides how brutal they die. Some kind of scale that Red Hood uses that decides his course of action, and it seems to exclusively alternate between quick death, and long, painful, sometimes not intact corpse deaths.
It’s morbidly interesting.
And from what Tim could gather from drones before they are shot down, Crime Alley seems to act like a circular city almost. A separate entity from Gotham, despite being part of Gotham.
Tim noticed people seem mostly congregated in the middling districts, because while not a true circle, the population seems to live in ‘rings’ that only seem to make sense to themselves.
The outer edges, near the boundary Red Hood set for his territory, seem to have few people, a mix of types sure, but few. And they all move like following lines of an invisible spider web, some people don’t pass certain areas, like a barrier sits there.
From his months of observation, it seems some people who wander into Crime Alley and don’t get chased out settle on the outer edges, while those there longer reside further in, though Tim has no idea where or who lives in the center of this oddly shaped territory.
He can’t get anything close enough to find out, any time he tries to send a drone further into Crime Alley, it never gets much further than what seems like the first layer after the outer layer.
And Tim doesn’t want to keep losing drones.
It’s maddening.
Right at his finger tips, but if he reaches any further, he’ll get burned. Tim isn’t sure whether Red Hood can be redeemed, he sure doesn’t seem like he wants it.
He’s tried to look at it from a more clinical perspective, but always, always, Tim can’t help but try to empathize. Red Hood reminds him almost of what Bruce could have become.
Dangerous, hurt, angry, afraid.
There’s someone else who slips in and out of the first layer sometimes, but seems unwilling to interact with Tim. And is quick to slip into the sewers as well to avoid him.
Due to Killer Croc, Tim can’t keep cameras in the sewers, between him and Grundy, nothing makes it. There are some areas where its fine, but the areas the two seem to pass through always end up with cameras becoming scraps.
Something else is definitely at work though, because it isn’t always those two damaging cameras. Even the most stealthy ones he installs, end up with fried circuits, and he can’t find out why.
Tim was never good at leaving things be. It’s like an itch under his skin, he can’t let it go. Sometimes, it gets exhausting, and he wants to just, step away, come back another time, leave it observation from a distance.
But that itching gets worse, and he finds himself going back to the Drake Manor, just to slip out and make his way back to the outer reaches of Hood’s territory. Something is going to give eventually, but Tim isn’t sure if it’s going to be his sanity, or something else.
He has also noticed, the shadows seem deeper here, darker. They devour light, and Tim tries to think about it logically, but its not logical. There’s no way it’s normal for Crime Alley to seem like it’s bathed in darkness, and while yes, Gotham’s shadows have always seemed darker compared to other cities, which made it easier for their stealth, this is something else entirely.
It makes his hair stand up.
Duke came by one time, at the request of Tim, and immediately fled. He couldn’t quite explain why, and nothing he said made any logical sense to Tim, but they couldn’t really look too deeply into the supernatural side of things, on account of most of their in contact occultist and other magical contacts seem to have too much on their plates to spare the time.
Tim remembers Zatanna was busy with some kind of imp or something that was causing mayhem. People grow more irritable and inhibitions are severely impacted. Tim couldn’t help any, none of that was his forte, and from what he understood, there was unrest in Louisiana, magical beings were on edge, so Madam Quiri was also busy with a mess to take care of.
John Constantine was always avoidant on good days, and recently even more so, hiding out on the fringes of the UK, and making it well known the only place he’d step out of the country for was the Watchtower, and absolutely no further.
Like usual, he wouldn’t elaborate, and seemed to be busy with pissing off who knows which angel was sent to harass him. Tim could do nothing about it, and aside from the oddly darker shadows of Crime Alley, there was nothing else supernatural going on that he could tell.
It seemed mostly just bad luck honestly.
A gun shot went off somewhere a few streets back, and Tim sighed, packing up his gear. That’s another thing that’s also been getting in the way of them finding a way to deal with Red Hood, there’s been an uptick of violence and general unrest, and not even due to Rogues either.
It feels like a heavy cloud descending onto Gotham, so far nothing broke, no heavy crash of rain so to say. But he can feel it, there’s something building up, slowly, but the heaviness is there.
Another gun shot, and some indistinct shouting, and Tim gives one last glance towards Crime Alley, and turns away to go deal with whatever is going on now.
He doesn’t see the way the shadows seem to breathe, spreading further along Crime Alley’s buildings.
Unseen eyes watch Red Robin head off, a flicker of darkness where Red Robin’s shadow once was, left when the vigilante left, oblivious to how part of his shadow didn’t follow.
Unfortunate for the entity, who had found it a game to mess with Red Robin.
He’ll be back.
Drawn once more to King’s Sire, and the mystery he holds.