Jason almost lost his footing when the telekinetic grip suddenly released. The gunshots that followed made him stagger half a step, his helmet snapping up to face Grifter.
Grifter watched the reaction closely. 'Reinforced under-armor… not bad.' The thought had barely crossed his mind when several pellets clattered against the ground between them. A second later, they burst open, spewing thick smoke that rapidly swallowed the entire space.
'One effective way to deal with someone who can do that,' Jason thought, 'is to cut off their field of vision.'
Inside the helmet, his visor display flickered as the system switched to infrared.
If he couldn't break their line of sight, then he'd be in serious trouble.
The smoke rolled thick through the scrap yard, turning the world into a shifting gray wall. Grifter didn't rush blindly out of it. With the environment cluttered and visibility shot, a careless move could cost him.
Instead, he calmly stepped backward, easing his way toward the edge of the smoke cloud. Might as well use it.
If Red Hood took the bait and struck from inside the cover, Grifter intended to be ready—ready to counter the attack the moment it came and close the distance with one of his own.
"I see you're the kind of man willing to do whatever it takes to win," Grifter acknowledged, his voice carried through the haze.
Not that he had any room to judge, he was the same kind of fighter.
Playing dirty never bothered him, not when it gave him the upper hand.
Though Grifter couldn't see—or sense—where Red Hood was in the smoke, the reverse wasn't true. Through the helmet's infrared display, Jason could clearly make out the mercenary's heat signature glowing against the fading haze.
He didn't hesitate.
Both pistols came up in one smooth motion, and he fired twice. The bullets tore through the thinning smoke, one aimed squarely for Grifter's head, the other lined up with the center of his chest—right where his heart should be.
The sharp crack of gunfire echoed through the lot.
Grifter reacted instantly, the sound alone enough to set him alert. With the smoke still swirling around him, he had a vague idea where the bullets were coming from. If he relied purely on his hearing and awareness, there was a very real chance those bullets would find their mark.
Sure, his regenerative factor would likely patch the wounds up eventually.
But if one of those rounds landed somewhere that crippled him—even temporarily—that moment would be all the advantage Red Hood needed to turn the fight decisively in his favor.
So he dropped low without hesitation.
Grifter sank into a squat and exploded off his feet, rolling hard to the side just as the bullets tore through the space he'd occupied a second earlier.
Jason squeezed the triggers again, ready to keep the pressure on and finish the job as the smoke finally began to clear from the air.
Instead—
Click. Click.
Empty.
The dry sound of his pistols told him everything. Out of ammo.
Grifter didn't waste the opening.
His gun was already in his hand as he surged forward into a sprint, firing two quick shots while closing the distance.
Red Hood reacted instantly. Steel flashed as he brought his sword up, the blade snapping through the air to deflect both bullets with sharp metallic sparks.
Then he moved.
Jason dropped low and dove toward the ground, sliding behind the rusted frame of a scrapped vehicle as the fight surged into its next brutal exchange.
Grifter pulled the trigger again.
Click.
—he was out of bullets too.
Without missing a beat, he holstered the gun and drew his daggers instead. The blades slid into his hands with ease as he began moving through the scrapyard, keeping low in a cautious crouch.
The maze of wrecked vehicles offered plenty of cover, and Grifter used every bit of it, drifting from one rusted frame to the next.
"I know this cowardly game of hide-and-seek is kind of what you assassins are all about," he called out, his voice carrying through the quiet yard, "but it's starting to get annoying."
Even as he spoke, he leaned casually against the side of a battered car, keeping most of his body shielded behind the metal. He still wasn't sure whether Red Hood had more bullets left, and he had no intention of giving the man a clean shot if he did.
Then, crouched behind another scrapped vehicle lined up among the rows of wreckage, Grifter reached down toward his boots.
His fingers slipped in and came back with two spare bullet clips—his backup supply.
One for each gun.
- - -
[Jason Todd's POV]
Just when Jason thought things couldn't get any more complicated, the new guy turned out to have telekinetic abilities.
Great.
Jason had dealt with enough metas to know that powers like that were a serious pain in the ass. If he stayed within Grifter's line of sight for too long, he risked getting locked down again just like before.
And that wasn't a mistake he intended to repeat.
Keeping low, he circled through the scrapyard, weaving between rows of rusted vehicles while staying out of sight. Somewhere nearby, Grifter was moving too—actively searching for him.
But something about the situation kept gnawing at Jason's thoughts.
Back at the parking lot, during their first clash, Grifter hadn't used that telekinetic power to simply overwhelm him.
Why?
Jason slowed slightly as the thought turned over in his mind. Something didn't add up.
'Could there be a drawback to using that power?' he wondered.
His previous run-in with a psychic meta-human had been far more troublesome. That guy's telekinesis had felt like being caught in a steel vise.
Grifter's hold, on the other hand…
It had been noticeably weaker.
Not useless—but definitely lacking.
The question was how. And right now, that answer still sat just out of reach.
"I have to say," the mercenary's voice echoed through the scrapyard, dripping with mock amusement, "I wasn't expecting this level of cowardice from the guy everyone keeps calling the big bad—Batman 2.0."
Red Hood did not give in to the obvious insult, knowing Grifter was trying to bait him.
- - -
Meanwhile…
As Jason and Grifter continued their game of cat and mouse, a small group of armed men who had just arrived at the scrapyard watched the scene unfold from a safe distance.
"Are you saying one of those two is the Red Hood?" one of them asked.
"Yes, boss Morgan," the man replied quickly. "I stepped out for a late-night smoke when the gunshots started going off. Thought the opps might've caught me slipping—I figured I was done for."
He rubbed the back of his neck before continuing.
"I couldn't see much since it's pretty dark out here, but from the flash of gunfire, I did catch sight of a guy wearing a red mask… and there was a red bat symbol on his chest."
The man worked and lived in a small garage within the scrapyard, which was how he'd ended up witnessing part of the fight.
"That's him, alright," Morgan said.
He was the leader of the biker gang gathered behind him—the same guy who had tried hitting on Li at the bar not too long ago before Jason stepped in and put an absolute belt-to-asses beating on him and his boys.
"So which one of them is the Red Hood?" another biker asked, squinting into the darkness as he watched the two shadowy figures moving between the rows of scrap.
Just then, one of the silhouettes shifted positions, slipping through the wreckage until it reached a spot adjacent to the other.
Once, this group had been known as the Devil Men biker gang.Now, they went by a new name.
The Gotham City Hunters.
A mercenary crew dressed in biker gear standing ready, their attention fixed on the scrapyard. Every one of them had their eyes on the prize—the bounty placed on Red Hood.
"What do you mean?" one of them asked.
"The one with the red mask, obviously." Another answered.
"They're both wearing red masks," the first man pointed out.
"I couldn't get a clear look at the other one from where I was standing," the informant admitted. "Too far, and the angle wasn't great. But I'm sure one of them had a bat crest on his chest."
Morgan squinted into the darkness, trying to make out the details for himself.
"It's too damn dark to see that from here," he muttered. Then he made a decision.
"Fine. We take them both. But the moment you spot the one with the red emblem on his chest, prioritize him."
He glanced at the men around him as he finished the briefing.
"Word on the street is the guy's extremely violent, and highly dangerous. That's why his bounty's so damn high, even though he only just showed up in the city."
Morgan gave a short nod.
The others returned it, raising their guns as they prepared themselves.
Meanwhile, deeper within the scrapyard, Grifter was quickly growing tired of Red Hood's hide-and-seek tactics.
Closing his eyes for a brief moment, he extended his awareness outward, releasing a subtle psychic wave as a telepath.
If he couldn't see Red Hood, then he'd find him another way—by searching for the presence of another mind in the area.
When Grifter extended his psychic awareness, he expected to find a single mind. Instead, he got two disturbing responses.
One of them gave him Red Hood's position almost immediately. But when he tried probing deeper—searching Jason's mind for even a fragment of coherent thought beyond the erratic mental noise—he ran into the same strange resistance as before.
Grifter had initially assumed the helmet might contain some kind of mental defense system that disrupted telepathic intrusion. But this time, he pushed harder, forcing his psychic reach deeper in an attempt to break through whatever barrier was there.
The moment he did, something answered back. A wave of raw emotion slammed into him.
Lust.
Bloodlust.
An endless, gnawing thirst for violence that seemed bottomless—as though no amount of bloodshed would ever be enough to satisfy it.
'Seriously… what the hell is wrong with this guy?' Grifter thought, instinctively taking half a step back.
Jason's mind was a mess.
There was no stable foothold anywhere in it—just fractured mental waves and that overwhelming hunger simmering beneath the surface.
'And this…?'
That was when he noticed something else.
Several other minds flickered at the edges of his psychic awareness.
They weren't alone.
Meanwhile, Jason had his gun trained in Grifter's direction, patiently waiting for a clear shot. A faint ache suddenly pulsed through his head.
He brushed it off at first, rolling his shoulder slightly and cracking his neck side to side as if to shake it away—but then something else caught his attention.
They had company.
'Who the hell are they… and how long have they been out there watching us?' Jason wondered, his thoughts beginning to race as he became painfully aware of the new danger lurking around them.
Once Jason confirmed the presence around them most likely wasn't Batman and the others—mainly because of the number of people he could roughly estimate lurking nearby—Morgan, the leader of the Hunters biker gang, raised his hand and gave a sharp signal.
The order was clear.
Take the shot.
All of it happened almost instantly—within the span of a couple seconds—for Jason, Grifter, and the Hunters alike.
The Hunters opened fire.
Gunshots erupted through the scrapyard as each member aimed at the two figures in the darkness.
Red Hood dropped flat to the ground and rolled quickly beneath the car beside him, sliding away from the direction the bullets were coming from.
Grifter responded just as fast.
He threw himself into a low dive, hitting the ground and rolling hard toward the side of another wrecked vehicle ahead.
After a brief burst, the Hunters stopped firing.
Several of them began moving forward cautiously, creeping closer to confirm the fate of the men they had just riddled with bullets.
Behind the cover of a rusted vehicle, Jason quietly shifted positions. Still crouched low, he crept around the back of the car.
As he turned his head to the right—
He found himself staring straight at Grifter.
The mercenary was crouched behind the same vehicle.
Neither of them hesitated.
In the same instant, both men drew their guns and leveled them directly at each other's faces.