Que ce soit le fait d'être mort ou le mode de vie vigilant, Jason ne pouvait pas déterminer comment il pouvait aller pour ce qui semblait être des jours sans même le moindre peu de repos au lit. Bien sûr, ses deux jours bizarres à Gotham avaient été assez mouvementés pour dire le moins, mais vous pensiez qu'un gars qui avait l'habitude de voir les visages de tous les jours de shmos déformer en sourires maniaques serait capable d'obtenir un peu de silence malgré les événements de la journée. Peut-être parce que ce n'était que sa deuxième nuit dans les couloirs de Wayne Manor? Deux jours n'étaient pas assez de temps pour ses contemporains pour l'accepter de nouveau dans le pli, et certainement pas assez pour qu'il soit habitué à toute la chose "acceptation". Au moins il avait pris le temps de déballer officiellement et de prendre une douche, l'odeur de Gotham n'était pas vraiment une expérience agréable.
Pour l'instant, les vingt anciens morts, Boy Wonder, faisaient son chemin toujours si silencieusement jusqu'à la grotte. Pour savoir comment précéder la Batcave était, Jason a trouvé que c'était un lieu de réconfort chaque fois qu'il avait besoin de penser. Il pensait que c'était pour ça que Bruce et certains de ses contemporains passaient leur vie entière à se réveiller là-bas. Bruce n'avait pas vraiment bien réagi à la nouvelle de la mésaventure de Damian, donc Jason était effectivement seul dans les couloirs de Wayne Manor, puisqu'une Selina Kyle (ou était-ce Selina Wayne maintenant?) Je ne voudrais probablement pas tester le champ de mines proverbial de traiter avec Jason Todd, et pour cela, Jason était reconnaissant.
Son premier pas dans la grotte, et les lumières lui soufflèrent automatiquement avec leurs rayons aveuglants trop familiers. Il avait juste besoin de quelque chose pour garder son esprit occupé, ou plutôt, c'est ce que Jason s'est dit quand il a passé le R-Cycle retourné pour inspecter l'un des innombrables Bat-Cycles de Bruce près du bord de la rampe de la grotte. Il a toujours gardé des pièces de rechange, l'enfer, il devait, considérant combien de fois on a été exposé à des faisceaux de mort et des explosifs quand ils ont choisi d'être les protecteurs de la nuit. Damian semblait être le type d'enfant qui n'apprécierait pas qu'un étranger s'amuse avec ses jouets, même si c'était pour une bonne raison, et Jason n'avait pas exactement la patience de partir de zéro, et il a donc commencé le processus de déplacer la moto à l'atelier de la grotte. Damian pouvait faire voler Batmobile, mais Jason était prêt à parier qu'il ne savait pas où Bruce gardait les bons trucs. Sa stache personnelle débordait de matériaux qui feraient un cri mécanique s'il savait comment fabriquer correctement des pièces avec eux; titane léger, kryptonian knickknacks, enfer même une sorte de shard magique de Zatanna. Tu l'as nommé, Batman l'avait.
Jason a utilisé le temps qu'il a fallu pour préparer le vélo et le violon avec les systèmes de sécurité de Bruce pour calculer le nombre d'heures-homme qu'il lui faudrait pour terminer ce petit projet. Bien sûr, il ne partait pas de zéro, mais démonter et réassembler une moto était un travail difficile, même pour un ancien garçon Wonder. Il devrait construire de nouvelles roues, gâcher la suspension, etc., et peut-être la peindre s'il se sent assez artistique. C'est vrai, il y avait déjà toutes vos mises à jour standard de Batman, mais il devrait au moins lui donner quelques nouvelles choses à gâcher. Il soupirait à lui-même quand on lui a finalement permis d'accéder à la stache secrète de Batman, j'espère que Bruce et Co. pourraient garder un secret pendant une semaine ou deux.
-- Maintenant, où diable Bruce garde-t-il le Nth Metal?
!( "Jason Todd")
**Name:** Jason Peter "Jay" Todd
**Alias:** The Red Hood, Formerly the second Robin
**Age:** 24
**Occupation:** Unemployed
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**Skills & Abilities:**
- A naturally gifted athlete trained by the likes of Batman, Ducra, and the League of Shadows in a wide array of skills ranging from martial arts to acrobatics and espionage.
- Retains a vast amount of knowledge regarding Gotham's underworld and even the Black Market from his childhood and first stint as the Red Hood. As can be expected, he also has a fearful reputation lingering over him.
- Spends his spare time building and repairing certain vehicles. Everyone needs a hobby.
- Though not on the level of Bruce or Tim, Jason possesses a fairly analytical and perceptive mind that elevates him above certain members of the Batfamily when paired with his personal experience in the less pretty side of Gotham.
- Though he's recently begun turning away from firearms, Jason is still a crack shot with his pistol, and is a little too knowledgeable with explosives and military hardware. He also claims to be the best knife fighter in the Batcave.
---
**Equipment:**
- A variety of knives, guns, tear gas, and other military grade knickknacks usually kept in his almost innumerable jackets.
- A customized Ducati Diavel specced to recreate Jason's R-Cycle.
- Jason's helmet is effectively toxin proof and allows him to breathe underwater, coming with its own explosive defense system and numerous vision settings. You know, average Batman upgrades.
---
**Personality & History:**
_Straight outta Gotham_
Born to Catherine Haywood and Willis Todd, Jason never knew his father, who not only abandoned his new family but was in and out of Blackgate before Jason ever learned how to walk. Childhood in Crime Alley is rough, rougher yet when you don't have a father figure. Young Jason resorted to petty theft and fell in with a number of street gangs in order to survive, which imbued him with a certain level of grit and toughness not found in the other members of the Batfamily. Well, at least until Bruce started accepting assassins. And Stephanie Brown.
Growing up with a drug addict for a mother was hard, but Jason tended to stay away from home as often as possible, leaving Catherine to her devices while Jason built his reputation as the local street menace. Before long, Catherine fell into a deep bout of depression, and when Jason returned home from one of Gotham's secondary schools, he found his mother's body strewn out across the bathroom floor. Notifying the authorities, Jason sat there for a good twenty minutes before an ambulance arrived. Interviewed and shuffled off to the nearest orphanage by the police, Jason would escape only weeks later.
_Boosting the Batmobile_
As expected, Jason fell back into a lifestyle of petty crime in order to feed himself, the only major difference being that he generally avoided the numerous street gangs of the area. Just why he chose to steal the tires off of Batman's personal mode of transportation is a thing of mystery, even to Jason himself, who shrugs it off as something he had to do when asked by others.
To his dismay, or rather, extreme luck, Batman would arrive before he'd finished on the third tire, catching the then fourteen year old red-handed with the tool used to do the job. Rather than reprimand him, Batman offered to give him a spin. One bad decision after another led to Jason's first time seeing the Batcave, and soon enough, he had donned the red and green tights and yellow cape to begin training as Robin, despite one Lucius Fox's dismay at Bruce's approval of such.
Thrust from the life of a street urchin into the halls of Wayne Manor, Jason took to his new role in gusto, seeing as he had no biological family he cared for, and before long was legally adopted by Bruce Wayne, though he's obviously stopped adding Wayne to the end of his name, for rather blatant reasons.
_A Death in The Family_
Jason, unlike those who have since donned the mantle, did not have a particularly long and dignified run as Robin, but rather a short and tumultuous six months of heated arguments with Bruce and trying to prove to himself that he deserved the costume just as much as his predecessor. Jason was particularly unforgiving to Gotham's street criminals than his contemporaries, partially due to his troubled past and partially due to his naturally aggressive demeanor.
The only particularly noteworthy event during his time as the Boy Wonder was when he foolishly chased a lead regarding a weapons shipment to an abandoned warehouse in the Bowery. Caught in a trap by the laughing man of Gotham, Jason was beaten nearly to death with a crowbar and trapped in the building with a large pile of explosives.
His last thought was one of regret when he heard Bruce pull up in the Batmobile.
_Resurrection_
Dead for almost four years, Jason's body was recovered by Talia and Ra's al Ghul for unknown purposes. Jason does not know just how long they maintained his corpse, but after they had dipped him in a Lazarus Pit everything came flooding back to him. Manipulated by the Demon's Head, Jason trained with the League of Shadows for a period of roughly three months before he managed to learn of the Joker's still being alive. Jason managed to escape the League's compound without being discovered by Talia or Ra's, though it was rather obvious to both just where he intended to go.
Jason maintains that he never intended to enact vengeance on Bruce; the man was still the closest thing he ever had to a father figure, but he needed to learn a lesson Jason himself had learned all those years ago on Gotham's streets. Crime can never truly be stopped, only controlled and regulated.
Integrating himself into Gotham's drug trade rather violently, the Red Hood quickly gained the Dark Knight's attention, and before long, Jason was leading his former mentor on a goose chase to one final showdown. Stuck in his old apartment in Crime Alley with Batman and The Joker, just above where he'd attempted to steal the tires of the Batmobile all those years ago, Jason presented Bruce an ultimatum: His life, or The Joker's.
Of course, Bruce being Bruce, managed to get the gun out of Jason's hand. Betrayed and feeling truly alone, Jason activated a timed bomb and made his escape from the area, never to be seen in Gotham again until years later.
_The Lost Days_
Following his encounter with Bruce and The Joker, Jason chose to travel the world, seeing as Gotham was no longer worth his time or his anger. The next three or so years would be something of an adventure for Batman's fallen son, who would end up spending time in a number of situations; From Freedom Fighting in Qurac, mercenary work in Vlatava, freelance vigilantism in Zandia and even a trip to Santa Prisca just to screw with one of Batman's foremost adversaries.
While on a trip in Bhutran, Jason was approached by Talia, and after making a right fool of himself by shooting at her, Jason was hauled off to an unknown mountain range in the northernmost region of the country and delivered unceremoniously to Ducra, otherwise known as the head of the All-Caste, an ancient order of Monks, or something. Though reluctant, Ducra agreed to train Jason and help him master his anger and sorrow. It was Jason's time in the Chamber of All, reliving all of his past memories and coming to terms with them, that he saw that his time spent trying to find a purpose in anywhere but Gotham was the exact opposite of what he needed to do.
Deciding the life of a monk wasn't for him, Jason left the All-Caste with a new sense of understanding. Ducra gave him a letter from Bruce informing him of his wedding to Catwoman. Though he'd already made up his mind, seeing that Bruce was willing to build bridges after everything Jason had done was a reassuring thought.
He packed his bags and made his way back home. Hopefully he won't be greeted with a Batarang when he arrives without so much as a phone call.
---
### Character Impressions
_Bruce Wayne, Batman_: "It's taken me a long time to figure out just what the relationship between Bruce and his so called children is. Before, it felt like I hadn't even existed. Killed by the Joker, replaced by someone that perfectly fit the ideal that was Robin, and before that, forced to emulate Grayson in every possible way rather than being myself. I went into that apartment expecting to die. Instead, I went on a four year brooding trip to get my head straight. Bruce may never openly admit it, but he needs us even more than we need him."
_Selina Kyle, Catwoman_: "Here I thought Lucius would've talked Bruce out of it. Honestly, Catwoman? Of all the drop-dead sexy femme fatales we've run into over the years? Shit, why not Wonder Woman or Black Canary? At least they make fighting Penguin and Two-Face a lot easier."
_Dick Grayson_: "One of the only cave crawlers to accept me for who I was, rather than what I was expected to be. I never quite got to have a brotherly bond with my predecessor like Tim has; "Busy with the Titans" was always the excuse, but we did have our moments. If there was anyone who I felt guilty for betraying all those years ago, it was him."
_Barbara Gordon_: "Ahh Barbie, if there was anything that proves that I should've pulled that trigger rather than...trying to wrench the truth out of Bruce, it's you. I don't expect you to forgive me, or to understand my misguided state of mind at the time, but I do hope we can be friends again, some day, but I understand if you never want to talk to me again."
_Tim Drake, Red Robin_: "My golden child of a replacement. Luckily enough for him, Tim wasn't in town during my little tirade, I'd hate to think what would've happened if he was. I do wonder why he named himself after a restaurant though, was "Big Belly" too obvious?"
_Damian Wayne, Robin_: "I wonder what the bride to be thinks about Bruce's dalliance with Talia? Were they even dating at the time? Honestly, Bruce needs to come to terms with his sexual frustration before it results in more kids that consider their katana their best friend. Do wish the kid luck with the cape though, thing was always tight on me."
_Stephanie Brown, Batgirl_: "Cluemaster had a kid?"
_Cassandra Cain, Blackbat_: "Did I miss the memo that in order to be Robin and or Batgirl you had to have a minimum of five years training under international assassins?"
---
**Extra**
- Perhaps as a carry over from his time on the streets, Jason likes to assign nicknames to his closer acquaintances, such as "Barbie" for Barbara and "Circus" for Dick.
- Frequently caught talking to inanimate objects, such as (
---
**Story Arc:**
_Making Amends_
After four years away from Gotham, Jason Todd has returned to the city of his birth on the day of Batman's wedding in order to reintegrate himself into the lives of the only family he has ever known. His time with the All-Caste allowed Jason to deal with and even understand his anger, and he now seeks something he'd never thought he'd seek out again: Redemption, a true sense of belonging, a place to call home. But past actions are hardly ever forgotten and even less so forgiven in Gotham, and Jason's got a long list of people to make amends with, and some less than friendly people are gunning for his helmet.
---
!( "Red Hood")