[Comprehensive British and American] Family Matters

Batman punched the Batcomputer's console, creating a noticeable dent in the metal panel under the glove.

"Red Hood, he's laughing at me."

On the screen of the bat computer is a selfie of the red hood next to the bat light, and many unreasonable comments from netizens:

"Who is this? The new bat vigilante?"

"Bet ten yuan that the guy under the mask must be handsome! (saliva)"

"Betting 100 yuan under the mask will definitely make you cry! (Contempt)"

"Could it be Robin No. [-]? You see, after Robin No. [-] disappeared, Nightwing appeared with Batman from time to time, and No. [-] also disappeared for a long time. It's time to change the ID and reappear." .”

"I heard from my cousin that there was a man named Red Hood recently, is it him?"

"It's still P's, isn't it? Isn't the bat light on the roof of the police station? Anyone can go up there already?"

"Isn't the Red Hood the old Joker's gang? And the Hood doesn't look the same. (Picture) (Picture)"

Nightwing and Red Robin quietly and obediently pretended to concentrate on their own business, and no one wanted to provoke Batman at this time.

In terms of tracking down the Red Hood, Batman can only fight alone.The Gotham police can't help at all. After all, in the case of the spokesman's dismemberment, the only person who saw the red hood was Batman.The surrounding monitors just happened to malfunction, and there was no video at all in the four hours before and after the incident.And there was no private anti-theft camera installed in the deceased's home, which means that the entire crime scene could not find any trace of the fact that "the red hood had appeared here", which means that the police did not even have the initial suspicion of launching an investigation. The relationship between the police is quite delicate. Even Director Gordon couldn't announce loudly: "Because Batman said that this person is suspected, let's investigate him!".

In order to express his apology, Gordon kindly provided a list of members of the Red Hood Gang who had been arrested for violence in the past, but the progress was still minimal.

Damian's running away from home does nothing positive other than fuel Batman's violent mood.Alfred felt that it was because of his own negligence that Damian had the opportunity to sneak away. Although the old man kept silent, anyone could see that he was blaming himself.

Dick and Tim are nestled in the corner of the Batcave, next to Tim's laptop.Dick looked at Tim with a kind of amazement as he tapped his fingers on the keyboard quickly, and then a string of codes faithfully began to execute the task.His own skills are pretty good, but compared with Tim, it's like the difference between a National car and a supercar.

"I don't understand at all. Where could he go?"

The search program found nothing again, and Tim ruffles his hair, which had been shattered by him in the previous failed searches.

"Uh, after all, he was taught by the League of Assassins, right? He must be very proficient in the basic skills of stealth." Dick tried to comfort Tim, and even took the initiative to carry the laptop from Tim's lap to work.Without the burden of the laptop, Tim straightly shrank his legs and hid his head between his knees in frustration.

"It's my fault, Damian hates me." Tim kept his head down and whispered to Dick about the pressure he didn't know. He didn't dare to tell Batman because he didn't know what would happen. No, in Bruce’s heart, there is actually a little bit of blaming Tim, but the failure of the search and the increasingly gloomy atmosphere in the whole Wayne’s house made Tim feel more and more guilty day by day, “I shouldn’t Picked up with him. I mean, I'm older than him, I should have let him go instead of fighting him. Now he's run away from home and disappeared with his ninja skills and we don't even know he's alive And what's more... oh my god, if something happened to him, Bruce would go crazy, he couldn't take another blow like that."

"Relax, relax, Timmy." Dick stretched out his hand and patted Tim on the back, and said soothing words in a low and steady voice, "I believe Damian will be fine, the training of the League of Assassins No kidding, he can protect himself. And the elder brother needs to let the younger brother unconditionally, I tell you that's not the case. Damian is still a child, so if you find him doing something unacceptable, you As a brother, you should tell him this mistake, so you don't have to endure all his pranks. If he runs away from home because of this, then after we get him back, I and you, we will tell him this kind of irresponsibility Responsible behavior is not acceptable, okay?"

Tim smiled weakly at Dick, sniffed for Dick to return his laptop.

"Thanks, Dick." The boy rubbed his bloodshot eyes, and set up the search criteria again, "You are really the best big brother."

Back in his search for Gotham's street monitors, Tim doesn't notice how hard the smile on Dick's mouth is.

Dick didn't think he deserved the title "Best Big Brother."If he was such a great big brother, he wouldn't let Jason down and throw him back at Bruce when Jason needed someone to deal with his emotional problems.If he had been half as patient with Jason as he was with Tim, maybe Jason wouldn't have gone to find his biological mother alone, or maybe he'd have told Dick—that's how brothers get along, right?You can tell your brother what you dare not tell your parents.And he can persuade Jason, or go with Jason...

But at that time, he just wanted to push Jason back to the mansion as soon as possible, because he didn't want to face the inhuman conflict between his brother and his teammates.Taking a step back, even if Jason told him, would he fly with Jason to find a woman who only had a name?He would probably say a few innocuous words to try to dissuade Jason from this crazy idea, and then comfort himself that he had fulfilled his brother's responsibility. (And he clearly knows that Jason is not the kind of person who can be dismissed easily.)

It wasn't until Jason died that he realized that nothing is more important than family.And this cognition should have been firmly drilled into his mind on the day he lost his parents, but he, an idiot, had to wait until Jason also became a great regret in his life to realize that this is so simple. It made him want to beat himself to death.

That's why he worked hard to make himself appear in Tim's life often.He can choose not to go back to the mansion, he can't stand Bruce's crazy obsession with resurrecting Jason, and whenever he tries to persuade Bruce to let go, the stumbling relationship between him and Jason will always be used to confuse him Face.So he chose to use another method, regular text messages, meeting for dinner and complaining about Bruce, hiding his uniform in his backpack after the night patrol and going to midnight movies covered in sweat, and he even encouraged Bruce to put his laptop on his back. Mu's guardianship is coming—since he found out that the Drakes are away from China for ten months out of twelve out of a year, and almost all of the two months they stay in China are used to attend receptions and academic seminars.Tim's allotted time to celebrate with fireworks for a week. (Not to mention the exact same birthday gift they gave Tim last year.)

Yet every time Dick gets a compliment like "You're such a nice brother" from Tim, he can still feel that hole in his heart, a little bit of chill seeping out of it, no matter how much he piles up on the hole. Even the deeds of a good brother can't completely block the chill.

"Does Damian have any friends? Or an acquaintance in Gotham?" Dick tried to use the police process for dealing with runaway children to help Tim narrow it down. "If he was with the League of Assassins before, how did he do it?" Came to Gotham?"

"Friend?" Tim couldn't hold back a sarcastic nasal voice, "you mean outside of his potted plant? No. And from the fact that he scares all the tutors away, I suspect he has no social skills at all Skill."

"It's not that bad." Dick couldn't help wrinkling his face at this bitter comment. "Actually, Damian is a good boy, quite cute. He even named the potted plant, you know?"

"Oh, really." Tim said words of surprise, but his tone didn't sound surprised at all, "What's it called? Is it a Terminator potted plant?"

"No, it's Groot." Dick couldn't help smiling, remembering his several interactions with Damian, "He even introduced me seriously that this was his friend, Groot. Difficult words too! Seriously, I think he just doesn't want to be treated like a kid because of his age."

"Whatever, damn it, another zero." Tim finished another round of searching, and the zero matching data on the screen made him close his laptop angrily, "Is he going to stay somewhere? I don't know. I think the little prince is the type who would go to sleep in the sewer."

"That's right, but not all of Gotham is covered by surveillance cameras, such as the old industrial area, Crime Alley, and...wait, Crime Alley!" Dick grabbed Tim by the shoulders and shook him vigorously. He snapped, "This is it! What better place to hide than Crime Alley? Especially a kid."

"But how did he avoid all the surveillance cameras along the way to reach Crime Lane?" This is what Tim couldn't figure out. Damian was last photographed on the surveillance screen leaving a suburban house and entering the city, but from the city There is still a long way from the edge to Crime Alley, and the surveillance system along the way is functioning normally.

"Hook the gun?" Dick made a shooting motion.

"Impossible, all the equipment is here, there is nothing missing at all." Tim rubbed his face tiredly, stood up and was about to report to Bruce their latest progress, "Unless his ninja elementary school still teaches how to fly Dundi, I can’t say for sure.”

"Maybe they are really using Chakra." Dick pretended to nod with his hands folded deeply, and Tim punched him on the arm.

"It's better to use Susanoo to fly from the sky."

"So you are watching it too! Although I think Dragon Ball is more classic."

"Personally, I like the Dead Pen, Evangelion genre."

"Hey... a brain-burning work..."

After packing up the laptop and the tangled power cord during the chat, Nightwing and Red Robin reported their speculation to Batman, and the three went to Crime Alley to search for Damian's whereabouts.

The lunatics are still in Arkham, and ordinary gangsters are no match for Damian.At this point in time, no one thought that Damian, who was new to Gotham, would cause more trouble than running away from home.

***

Red Hood entered the small, long-abandoned apartment through a broken window.The sofa is still in the old position, but the seat cover is dirty. I don't know how many people have slept on it, and how many people have eaten and drank it.The place where the dining table and chairs used to be placed is only the wreckage of a set of tables and chairs. The kitchen counter is full of opened cans and the corpses of rotting rats and insects.Red Hood walked to the only room in the apartment, and as soon as he turned the doorknob to open the door, a knife was held on his neck.

"Stand back! Slowly." The knife owner ordered sharply in the shadows behind the door, "Put your hands where I can see them, and don't make any strange movements!"

Red Hood slowly raised his hands, stretched his index fingers to show that he didn't hide anything between his fingers, and then stepped back away from the door.The man with the knife also followed his pace and stepped out of the room keeping the knife on the red hood's neck.

It was a rather short figure, who looked like a child, and his face could not be seen clearly under the cloak, but his threatening tone and words were very sophisticated.The combination of the two elements creates a weird contrast.

Red Hood sighed very dramatically, and asked the child holding the knife to press the blade into Red Hood's neck a little more, and asked viciously, "How?"

Just after he finished asking, before the final sound disappeared into the air, in that fleeting moment, the red hood had already slapped the murder weapon used to threaten him. The child's reaction was also very fast, and the next second Swinging the knife towards the hand of the red hood, but the other party obviously expected that he would strike back like this. When the knife was about to hit his palm, a black shadow bounced from the ground and went straight to the child's face hidden under the hood and go.

The kid sideways past the black figure, an empty beer bottle, but in such a short time the red hood had moved from in front of him to the side of his hand holding the knife, facing the back of the knife.If the child chooses to switch hands with the knife at this time, he will completely lose the ability to fight back during the switching period, so he did not choose to do this, but directly pushed his right elbow to the side of Red Hood's waist bump away.

"Oh, you want to destroy my kidney as soon as you come here, you are so cruel." The voice of the red hood was processed by the voice changer in the mask, but the tone didn't sound like he was angry.Not to mention that he easily moved away from the danger zone with one step, and the child rushed up again with a click of his tongue and a knife.

"Please, I don't have time to fight you all night." Red Hood muttered to himself, "I'm sorry, Damian, it will hurt."

The kid—Damian—apparently didn't expect Red Hood to know his name, and he hesitated for a moment before swinging the knife before he was slammed to the ground, cracking the dilapidated floor in many places, The sawdust dug into his cheek, and he couldn't help but hiss and gasp at the corner of his mouth.

"Okay, let's have a good chat in another place." Red Hood bent down and "picked" Damian out of the wooden board and clamped it under his arm. He was about to lift his legs but stopped, tilting his head. Damian jolted, causing the kid to swear angrily, "Hey! Don't curse so hard. Where's Groot?"

"I'm Groot!" (here!)

The little tree man quickly ran out of the room, and the little tree man who had grown up a lot raised his hands and made a "hug" gesture that is common all over the world.

"Groot! Boy! Long time no see, come on, hold on tight." Red Hood bent down and reached out to let Groot stand in his palm, then put the little tree man on his shoulders, this time he He directly kicked open the gate, climbed to the roof of the opposite building with the hook gun, and began to move quickly from roof to roof.

They ended up on the balcony of a penthouse apartment, with Damian lowered to the ground first and Groot moved onto his shoulders.And the red hood generously exposed his back to the little assassin who wanted to slash him with a knife just now, and was entering the password in front of the landing door.

"Okay, come in quickly." Red Hood opened the landing door, motioning for the two boys to enter the room.Damian hesitated for a moment, puffed out his chest to protect Groot with one hand, and swayed into the Red Hood's safe house arrogantly with the attitude of a king on patrol.The french door closed behind him, blocking out the noise and the cold wind, followed by the deflated sound of something being opened, and the soft click of something touching the table.

Damian rolled his eyes and turned around, not surprised to see his elder brother who was supposed to hide from his grandfather in a secret place waving at him, and the scary red hood was placed on the coffee table next to him.

"What are you doing here?" Damian couldn't believe that this guy appeared in Gotham swaggeringly. Didn't he know that Grandpa hated everyone who got involved in Lazarus Pool?

Jason spread his hands and made a "What!" gesture: "I thought that was my problem, don't rush words, Rice."

The nickname "Rice" made Damian groan|groaned, he really didn't understand why these people love to have nicknames, Grayson chose to be "***" instead of using a good name.Drake...forget it, even the loyal and dedicated old butler is called "Alfred" instead of being properly called by his full name.

"Oh, I get it." Jason went around Damian to get the first aid kit from the cabinet, beckoned Damian to sit on the bed, and himself moved a chair to sit opposite him, "You and mom The kind of guy who likes to use a big name. But seriously, nicknames are love, so... you're Rice, end of discussion."

"I really can't see the relationship between '**' and love." Damian could still hold back when the sawdust was pinched out, but when the disinfectant touched the wound, he still twisted his face reflexively .

"That...you will understand one day." Jason deliberately winked at Damian, causing the kid to say "Tt" and then kicked him directly in the chest. He backed away a little without pain.

"You're disgusting, Jason." Damian took out a small mirror from the first aid kit to examine the wound on his cheek. As for his blush...it must be because the wound was irritated, not because of Jason's dirty joke.

"I'm so hurt. I took my homeless brother back to take care of him, and he said I was disgusting!" Jason covered his face pretending to be sad, and the little tree man rushed over to Jason's side to comfort him. (I'm Groot - you won't be terribly sick.)

"I'm serious, Jason, why did you come to Gotham? Is there nothing wrong with Grandpa?"

"It can be said that our mother is amazing, and now she is in charge of the League of Assassins." Jason counted silently for three seconds, and then laughed out loud as Damian almost hit the ceiling with a jump, and shouted: " What!" It wasn't until Jason told him about the current situation of the alliance and the reason why Thalia didn't come directly in person that Damian sat cross-legged on the bed as if he was too excited.

"Oh, and then she asked me to tell you that she was mad at you for ditching Ubud and sneaking off to Gotham. So I'm going to send her a picture now..." Jason said to the sluggish Damian pressed the shutter, and began typing quickly, "Then tell him I've whipped you so she can calm down...done."

Following the notification that the sending was successful, Jason turned the phone around and showed it to Damian: in the photo, Damian's eyes were not focused, and there were large red spots on his left and right cheeks, with some indistinct blood stains .The following is Jason's text: Find little D, the education of love has been implemented.

Damian clutched his cheek, embarrassment heightened as Thalia's messages came back one by one.

—Be careful, Jason.

— Stay safe, both of you.

—Listen to your brother, Damian.

—I love you both.

"Great, Mommy's order, I will be the head of the house from today on." Jason stuffed his phone back into his pocket, turned the chair around and hugged the back of the chair so that his chin could rest on the upper edge of the chair back, "Confess the time: why do you Didn't you stay safely in the mansion?"

Damian looked at Jason.He just kept looking at himself and smiling, and Damian felt chills when he laughed.

"Because of Drake." Damian threw out the person he hated the most at the moment without thinking.

In the beginning, Damian just wanted to see what kind of ruthless character the man his father had chosen to replace Jason was, but Damian was disappointed.This Red Robin is at best a technical talent, his melee combat skills are simply not as good as Damian's when he was five years old, and now it seems that he is obviously not as good as Jason, but for such a weak chicken, his father Said himself that he chose Drake.

"Drake?" The familiar surname brings back fragmented memories of Jason, the little boy at the party, his first (and perhaps last) Robin fan, a friendship formed by texting The boat, the stargazing invitation he sent out too late.

"It's him, that Red Robin." Damian whispered a few words in Arabic, which made Jason deeply wonder if the appeal of Crime Lane had become stronger over the past few years, so he went wandering for a few days. God, just swearing, "Timothy Drake. A big fool who can only follow his father around."

The boat of friendship really capsizes.

Jason told himself calmly, don't be impatient, Timothy is not a rare name, and Drake is also a common surname, don't get excited, be calm.Maybe the boat will turn back later?

"Timothy Drake. Master of Drake Industries?" he heard himself ask.

"That's him! Ah, it's just that he is under the guardianship of his father now. I heard that because Drake's parents are not in the country all year round, his father came forward to fight for custody." Damian turned his face away in disgust, "Hmph, You'll behave yourself in front of your father."

The boat of friendship has been completely sunk.

Not even a single bubble sank.

Jason got up in silence, shut himself in the bathroom, and locked the door behind him.Sitting on the bed, Damian could hear the scolding inside: "Sonofabi*ch! I treat you as a friend and you miss my dad! I like the second-generation Robin the most!"

Damian gasped and couldn't help hugging the pillow on the bed tightly.

It turns out that Drake actually had this kind of intention!

So insidious!