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It's all got rather out of hand, Jason thinks to himself.
First there was the thing with the duffle bag. Which had worked spectacularly. A little too well, in fact. Because the thing is, all that really happened was that he walked in on the aftermath of a shootout between Black Mask's gang & 3 or 4 smaller outfits that had been trying to muscle in on his turf (Jason had been supposed to be there, but he'd been late - hey, he was new to this whole crime lord thing, he thought maybe it was polite to be 'fashionably late', like Bruce taught him back when he'd had to attend all those boring ass galas. No, turns out the crime lord thing to do would've been to show up super early & paranoid, with an itchy trigger finger). It had been a complete & total massacre. Jason had just - cleaned up. & taken advantage of a few extra materials to help build his desired reputation a little more quickly.
It had worked.
It had worked a little too well.
Good thing the biggest thing he'd learned in the league had been how to get really, really good at dodging, or Jason would've been dead several times over.
Not that he hadn't killed any of the 'victims' attributed to him. Jason was still a tough as nails street rat from crine alley, after all. But it was a pretty small percentage. Most of them ended up killing (or seriously maiming) each other. Criminals never seemed to learn, that ganging up on a single opponent in a narrow space like an alley is a really dumb idea. You're far, far more likely to hit an ally than your target (at least when that target isn't completely untrained, anyway). & Gotham's alleys were so dark that mist of them never knew they'd hit each other. Soon the tales of Red Hood's berserk rages had given him the strength of up to a dozen men. (Yeah, 'cos that's the maximum number of idiots you can squeeze into a Crime Alley alley, Jason thought to himself. Still, it was good for his - bad - reputation.)
Then there had been the thing with the replacement. Jason hadn't meant to hurt him at all. He'd just meant to break in & scare the kid. How was he supposed to know replacement was stress cleaning his birdarangs. That he'd keep one in his hand when he leapt up & ran from Jason. That he'd run for the stairs, rather than the elevators or zetas. That he'd trip (over nothing Jason could see), & tumble down the endless staircase faster than Jason could keep up. That his flailing, unconscious, death grip on the birdarang would somehow manage to slit his own throat. Or that he'd give himself a concussion so bad that he wouldn't remember anything, & all anyone else would see would be Red Hood showing up & the cameras cutting out! No-one could've predicted that.
Jason hadn't even known about the memory loss until later. He'd just seen the mess the kid had made of himself (& the shattered Bo staff he'd tried to pull out while running - maybe that'd been what tripped him?), pulled the alarm, & scarpered. No-one would believe injuries that bad were self-inflicted. Hell, Jason had seen it happen, & he didn't even believe it! But it made the whole "waiting for the baby bird to explain to the big bad bat" thing a bit of a non-starter. Instead, the kid (who Jason would've actually liked to maybe get to know, once he wasn't risking life & limb running around Gotham dressed as a fucking traffic light) was scared shitless of Red Hood (& therefore Jason). Another boon to his reputation, but kind of a blow to the whole "getting Bruce to talk to him, but on Jason's terms, not Batman's" plan he had going.
Kidnapping the Joker definitely hadn't been the best move. Jason had been so hopped up on fear & adrenaline that all of his carefully prepared lines had gone right out of his head. Not to mention the fact that the fucking Joker wouldn't. Shut. Up.
He hadn't expected Bruce to actually kill the monster - why would he, when he never had before? - still, he'd never expected Batman to go for him instead. What a fucking hypocrite!
Inventing the long-term pit madness had been a stroke of genius. It had given him an in with the rest of the gang (& there was no way he was leaving his siblings alone with daddy bats now he knew what the man was capable of). The downside was he had to keep faking those bursts of rage. Okay, so sometimes it was kind of cathartic, but often it just sucked. He nearly cried the time he'd chosen to launch into one just as Alfred came in with a trap of cookies & the whole thing went flying... Heartbreaking.
At least he'd been able to wean himself off them a little. "Work on getting himself under control". He'd even managed to bond with the baby bird a little (though his first idea of trying to bond over their matching neck scars hadn't been the best idea, by any stretch of the imagination).
But now, apparently, some stupid think tank somewhere had been studying the Lazarus pits (even if half of them kept going mad - that's what you got for messing with bad shit. You'd think people supposedly that smart would know that?) & they'd found out they were made of some chemical called Dionysium, or something. The bats were hella excited. They wanted to do tons of tests on Jason. Maybe find a treatment or some shit.
They weren't going to find anything.
& Jason would have to explain.
Jason hated explaining.
It was why he was so good at getting out of things. How he'd honed half his dramatic skills.
Maybe he could get away with it if he staged a really, really big pit meltdown?