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Earth 696 - Gotham City Streets
Gotham’s latest star was going by the name of Scarecrow. Hood personally thought his costume was drab, and his goal wasn’t the usual among the people they took down. Greed was a popular one, so was revenge.
Scarecrow just wanted to test out something new… and the whole city were his test subjects. The victims they’d discovered in his wake so far were all hospitalized and some Hood knew would not be getting up again. That thought chilled him and he knew it was eating at Batman. But what could they do?
They needed a prime subject’s blood to make a cure (if that was even possible, was what was infecting people a virus or bacterial in nature?) and to do that they might need the original source. Which lead to this moment now, them fighting against hired thugs trying to get into the building that made Scarecrow’s lab.
After so long fighting alongside each other, Batman and he had developed a fluid ease that could not be forced. But they were also people- and people made mistakes.
Hood’s started when he saw their target and decided to taunt him.
“Crow-man! I just gotta ask, why straw? Don’t you know the implications? Haven’t you ever watched Wizard of Oz? Scarecrows are known to be intellectually challenged.”
Of course they didn’t know who exactly Scarecrow was at this point in time, but Jonathan Crane was not about to let a slight such as this slide. Enraged but clear headed, Scarecrow swung at Red Hood, dodging the man’s bladed spade and managing to sink one of the needles on his glove into the caped-man’s shoulder. The vial of fear-toxin connected to the needle depleted and Scarecrow chuckled with glee.
Hood cried out and staggered back into someone solid. His vision was getting blurry and he didn’t notice as Scarecrow made his getaway. Before a frenzied buzzing started up in his ears he heard a distant call of “HOOD!” in what he thought was perhaps Bats’ voice.
It didn’t sound happy, and for some reason that made him laugh. His laughter cut through the buzzing so he kept laughing. It was going to be hell on his throat but strangely everything was going numb.
See what life could really be like? How about I show you some more!
His vision was red and vibrating and when he glanced at himself in a shop window he saw not his mask and cape. He was barefaced as he so rarely was anymore, and his suit was a rather fetching shade of violet, with an eye-popping green waistcoat and orange shirt. His smile widened and another giggle let out of his red painted lips.
Turning towards the fuzzy image of one of the thugs not unconscious, he had a sudden urge to slice his face up. The man wasn’t smiling. And that ought to be corrected. With a glee in his movements that had been absent for many, many months, he advanced on the man brandishing in his bladed weapon.
It shouldn’t take much work, flesh was oh so soft after all! But sadly, the man didn’t want to smile, and struggled a fair bit.
“Hold- Still-!” his voice sounded manic and it made him giggle again. It was almost as if he’d sucked in a balloon full of helium!
He slammed the man’s head against the pavement until he stopped moving, then placed the spade’s tip on his cheek. Not as useful as a knife would be-
The next moment stars burst in his eyes and blackness overtook him.
~~
Hood came to feeling like he’d taken a bad acid trip. He let out a snort at that thought, acid trip. This brought the attention of the only other occupant in the room.
“Hood, you’re awake. How are you feeling?” grumbled the voice at a level that made his head ring.
“Please stop yelling.” he moaned in reply, raising a hand to cradle his aching head.
“I’m barely above a whisper.”
“Then whisper.” he grated out in irritation brought on by pain. He didn’t think he could feel pain anymore, but oh was he being proven wrong that moment. It took a few more seconds for him to place a few things together.
One, he was laying on a medical table. Two, said table was in the Bat Cave. Three, that meant that the voice was undoubtedly Batman’s. Four, the last thing he remembered was-
Oh God.
Not even remotely, Hoody.
Jolting up into a sitting position brought back the ringing in his head, but he had an urgent need to lose everything in his stomach. His helmet hindered this need and he wasn’t sure if it was worth taking off in the presence of his idol.
Attempting to swallow down the bile he took deep breaths. After more than five minutes he managed to scrape out, “What happened?”
“I’m not sure. Your blood work is… confusing.”
Finally looking up at Batman’s imposing form, he noticed the frustrated look gracing his features. Something sunk deep in his soul.
“And that means…?”
Batman took a moment, then a deep breath and turned around to the giant computer. After typing in a few commands, Hood’s picture (his costumed one thankfully) showed up along with a zoomed in photo of what he assumed was his blood. Batman didn’t have a “before” picture, but Hood had seen photos of blood in science class from school.
His looked nothing like those. He prayed it was because of whatever Scarecrow had injected into him.
He knew deep down in his bones it wasn’t.
“Scarecrow’s fear toxin is the microagents with an orange tint. Your blood cells are obviously red. However… there is a third microbody here that I can’t identify… and it’s eating the fear toxin before it can get to the blood cells. They’re some sort of anti-body, or something similar. I’d say it’s a cure but…”
Here Batman glanced back at Red Hood still sitting on the exam table. He couldn’t see his face, which for that Hood was extremely grateful. He wasn’t sure how white his complexion could get given the circumstances, but he’s pretty sure it’d be as white as snow.
“Are…” he had to swallow and start again just to get the words out beyond the lump in his throat, “are you saying… I’m immune to Scarecrow’s fear toxin?”
Silence dominated the cave.
He had to break that deafening silence before his sanity cracked even further. No matter with what. “Because of something I already have.”
“It appears so, yes.”
Can’t poison the poisonous, Hoody my dear.
An unhinged and mirthless chuckle escaped his lips.
“Well. That’s… that’s something. Ain’t it something, Bats?” he said with obvious false cheer. It grated on his ears but he couldn’t let his mask slip.
“While you were… passed out, I managed to capture Scarecrow and hand him over. I’m working on the cure now in fact. Should be finished within the hour. The victims who haven’t passed the breaking point should be getting it tonight.” Batman told him, pointedly not answering his question. Nor did he bring up the elephant in the room.
The dancing pink elephant in the room that was what exactly happened before he “passed out”.
Red Hood was almost grateful for this obvious decision to ignore it ever happened. But now he wondered… if the fear toxin wasn’t to blame… would it happen again?
Oh you can count on it.