Chapter Text
Okay, so maybe recruiting hardened, native Gothamites into a sketchy, never before seen drug ring is harder than Tim had given any thought to.
Doors, both metaphorical and physical, slammed into Tim’s face with prejudice. Harsh, harsh prejudice.
Perhaps it’s better to start from the beginning of the week.
Sunday, the true beginning of the week, fuck what anyone else says, was a montage of planning, of creating dossiers on people, double checking said dossiers, putting pressure on existing drug rings through anonymous tips to the GCPD and surveillance, mulling over a variety of warehouses under Tim’s name around the state, and generally sleuthing about Gotham in the night. Normal Red Robin stuff, really.
Monday is where the shitstorm really kicked off, as Mondays usually are when that happens.
Helena’s contacts are, for the most part, mob haters and mob people. Nothing in between. Granted the ratio of mob haters to mob people is two to one, but Helena’s contacts are so vast that it doesn’t actually matter in the end— it’s like saying there’s twenty fruit flies to ten spiders; Tim is still majorly freaked the fuck out by the spiders no matter what.
The mob haters, as the name suggests, really hate the mob. So much so that they will just blurt any info about it to the right people, and Helena has always been a part of the right people.
So Tim drops in on a little illicit meeting for the Khadym mob, a relatively small-time gang heavily involved in drug smuggling, and kicks the shit out of them. All for the low, low cost of a probably fractured cheek bone (from a surprise pistol whip) and a fancy new bullet wound (not hole, Tim’s suit is too good for that shit) on his right pectoral.
Tuesday was spent much the same. Putting the fear of Red Robin into these low-time, gun-toting losers is a joy in his life, even if a knife does puncture his right thigh area and his ribs get bruised. Still, it’s not an actual stab wound because, as Tim stated earlier, Tim’s suit is the shit. He does have to sanitize it and take an extra immunity booster that night though.
So, with all the little fish in the business subdued, Tim has to set his sights on the big ones.
Bruce has absconded with Damian to a thingy that he assured everyone was not a big deal, only Batman and Robin are needed, yes he’s certain. Tim just thinks that he’s trying to bond with Damian and is being unnecessarily extra about it, like how he made Tim a whole miniature Batmobile when he was fourteen. Bruce is funny like that. That being said, he and Damian are out of town, and Oracle— their commander when Batman isn’t available— has given Tim permission to do as he sees fit. And with both Nightwing and Black Bat not being primarily Gotham based heroes, Gotham City is Tim’s corrupt oyster and he’s going to crack it over his knee if he has to dislocate his kneecap to do it.
So. Big fucking fish to hunt here, and Tim’s all out of bait.
If it were possible to crack down on each and every crime syndicate in Gotham, Batman would have been over and done with them years ago. As it is, nothing much can stop these guys permanently. Enter one Jason Todd, the Red Hood and occult magic extraordinaire.
Jason, chock full of blusteringly bitter words and much grumpiness, handed over a fucking treasure trove of files from his time of reigning crime champion in the Gotham City ring, including but not limited to: information on any drug trades that had withstood his wrath and worked with him and people he knew in the drug trade that might be tempted by Tim’s offer. Jason is good like that, and that’s why Tim continues to pester Jason when Tim knows he has something to interest the big, bad Red Hood.
So Wednesday is spent absolutely shredding other big bad’s trades electronically— or, as Time loves to call it, Bonding with Barbara— and sending out sweet little offers to the people Jason directed him to. Via technology or shady back alley meetings. Tim got a few more near misses in bullet wounds.
Which leads to his current dilemma.
Close to three dozen offers and there has not been one bite on the shiny reel Tim has cast. Not one.
It’s honestly a little insulting, which is a problem in itself, because Tim could have sworn he was done with this ego stuff, with all the shit about pride and falls and all that.
So, new plan. Obviously, sketchy people don’t respond to sketchy offers, which is strange because Tim is sketchy and would think twice before turning down the juicy, juicy bait that was offered. But maybe that says more about Tim than anyone else.
New. Plan.
Networking old school style. Tim can do networking. Half of his job as Robin was networking for Batman and the Mission. (Because Bruce can’t keep a civil relationship with anyone other than over-powered beings who find him funny.)
Tim’s got this.
_____
He starts with the groups that firmly do not work for Scarecrow and Joker. That actually narrows down the pool quite a bit, and it’s rather easy to find a starting point.
Drug production is usually found in crammed, ugly little bolt holes around the city. Dank, fluorescent lighting is the only benefit to speak of, as the rats, temperature, and other accommodations provided are just to the left of inhumane. Hey, maybe that could be one of Tim’s selling points: only slightly drafty warehouses. Well, the official marketing slogan could be devised at a later time, as Tim is one hundred percent certain working for him is a trillion times better than working for anyone else. He’s even offering the same general benefits that he gives Neon Knights employees, for all that healthcare is a non option.
But anyway, dirty, disgusting bolt holes. Tim hates those. He’s nearly bled out in enough that he subconsciously associates them with pain.
It’s a conspicuously quiet night when Tim drops in on his new employees. Moderately smoggy, probably only the odd convenience store robbery on the crime scene, and a waning gibbous moon. Tim sure knows how to pick recruitment nights.
With great aplomb and drama, Tim crashes through the window. Batman style.
Guns are trained on him in seconds, and Tim hurls knockout pellets at the two hired guns in the room. Shitty security, too. How should Tim fix that? No normal criminals are going to want to mess with anything Red Hood, Oracle, and Huntress associated, but bigger fish might. Hiring guns is a morally reprehensible prospect, but Tim’s not above it. Maybe he can train Damian to guard his various warehouses. That would be funny.
Focus, Tim. New recruits.
“Good Gotham evening, everyone.” Tim announces to the fear frozen mass of illegal drug operators. He circles the room, plucking the large, likely illegal guns off of the unconscious goonies as he goes. The few people not shocked still move to tug at the doors Tim locked in advance. That’s not a very good threat response. Tim will have to train them out of it. “I have a proposition for all you ladies, gents, and indefinables.”
A short woman pushes to the forefront of the crowd, her purple hair catching in the dim fluorescent light.
“Scram. We ain’t doing anything illegal, so no Bat has any right to be here.”
Blinking in the face of such a blatant lie, Tim pointedly turns his head to where a Joker goon wannabe is sprawled unconscious on the floor. Probably a gangster grunt.
The woman’s scowl deepens. “What? Can’t have a little protection around here?”
“Well, no.” Tim replies bemusedly. “It’s Gotham. The best protection offered is a Beetlejuice reject.”
(The Batsuit would fit right into the Broadway set, too.)
She falters, and Tim presses forward. “Besides. I said proposition, and I meant it. How would all of you like a new job?”
A man edges away from where he was still fruitlessly tugging on the locked doors. “This that Neon Knights shit again?”
Tim grimaces. He may have gone a little overboard with the business cards back when the Neon Knights was first picking up traction. And the referrals. And the posters in plaster all down the streets of the East End. And the Burnley, which is coincidentally the area Tim is now inhabiting. But these guys don’t know that Tim’s the one that commissioned the posters, and, by Batman himself, it’s going to stay that way.
“Nah.” Tim whips his bo staff free and gives it a few flourishing twirls, causing the couple of men who were edging forward quite conspicuously to falter back a few steps. Good. It’s Tim’s policy as an employer to keep the recruits guessing. Smirking a bit, Tim lays his bo across his shoulders, hooking his arms over it by the elbow. “I figure that if you guys wanted an above belt job, you’d get it. Not my business why you chose non-violent crime. Anyway, as a little segue into the job offer, how good are you all at producing medicine?”
“What?” The purple haired woman spits, vitriol coloring her voice like a true Gothamite. “You think we’re gonna supply you with whatever shit you need? Go to a fucking pharmacy, shithead.”
“Yeah, that’s actually what started this whole mess. To cut an entirely short story even shorter, I hate that people are dying because they can’t get the resources that they need since Gotham and it’s surrounding cities are a fundamentally no-go zone for the federal government.”
There’s muttering, and lots of it. Voices clamor over one another in an attempt to be heard, and Tim feels as though he’s in a press conference without the mock decorum that reporters front. He can’t decide if it’s better or worse than a regular press conference.
The sharp snap of his bo staff against the concrete rings out over the crowd, persuading them to delightful silence and downright domesticity. For Gothamites that is.
Definitely better than a regular press conference, then.
“Because of No Man’s Land and the toll it took on our city, we are still in a rut with the government and government affiliated.
While the official terms don’t state it explicitly, the general consensus is that companies and departments can choose where and how they interact with Gotham, and the only place you see that happening is through Wayne Enterprises. That’s not to say that Wayne Enterprises is our enemy. They’re trying. Well, some of them are.” Tim rolls his eyes, feeling the toll of exhausted exasperation in the motion pulling on his eyeballs. “So what’s my point? The point is that Gotham and its surroundings are not getting the critical aid that they need. My plan is to fix that through a complex, drug chain-esque medicinal distribution ring.”
Murmuring breaks out again, but a good many people are just… staring at Tim. Which is cool, cool, fine, all good, it’s not like Tim practiced that speech or anything last night after patrol.
“So you, Gotham‘s elite illegals, are the first link in the plan. We produce amazing medicine, administer through drug runners and, I dunno, maybe a few actual pharmacies, and we continue. Hopefully, our business keeps itself out of the red, but if not, I’ll handle it. Our finances will be in capable hands. It’s all very thorough, I assure you.”
Make no mistake, if Tim hadn’t taken out the goonies and confiscated the guns, he’d be dripping blood from numerous bullet wounds right now. No one was pleased with Tim’s speech.
“Fuck off!”
“Shut the hell up!”
“Woah.” Tim says, almost to himself among the ruckus. “That’s a lot of repressed hostility we’ve got going on around here.”
Well, never let it be said Tim didn’t have a B plan. Or a C plan.
The utility belt has many uses. In fact,it might just be Tim’s favorite part of his many costumes. The best use is of course storage, along with the pocket Tim installed with an extra loud and indiscreet zipper. It didn’t exactly make itself known over all of the curses to Tim’s mother and overall character, but it satisfied Tim an admittedly excessive amount. It’s the little things that keep the average Gotham vigilante going.
Licking his gloved thumb for show, Tim leafed through his rubber bound, four inch stack of twenties, making sure to flash the number amount to the irritable crowd below.
There’s nothing dramatic like an instant quiet. That would be too satisfying and a complete fulfillment of Tim’s dreams. It’s a gradual, sharp eyed quiet that sweeps slowly across the crowd. Never let it be said that Gotham is only full of psychopaths. The regular citizens are rather pragmatic.
“Shame.” Tim says, making a show of tapping the mostly straight bills into realignment before tucking them back into his utility belt. He then draws out a slightly smaller stack of fifties. “My trial runs pay pretty decent, you know. Probably better than the pennies the BTM gang is paying you.”
A man steps forward. The woman with purple hair slaps his chest with a braced arm, blocking him with a glare. Likely trying to commune to him telepathically to not be a baby bitch sell out. Tim kind of likes her. She reminds him of Steph in small ways. Probably the purple, if he’s being honest.
There’s a patented Gotham glint in the man's eyes. He sidesteps the woman and gets closer to Tim than anyone else has dared.
“What products did you have in mind?” He asks, just shy of licking his teeth in anticipation. The others he was standing with watch on with similar expressions. Hungry, hungry people.
Tim feels a grin carve open his maw. “Now we’re talking.”
The bribes, man. They’re always good for something.
_____
Tim’s new business pal is… not an amicable man. He pulls a knife on Tim the moment they stepped into an alleyway together. It was par for course, obviously, so Tim was prepared, but it wasn’t the best way to begin a business deal.
“Hey man,” Tim complains, raising his bo staff out of the pseudo-relaxed position it rested in. “I thought this was a business meeting.”
“This isn’t a robbery,” he begins, still a nameless man. (Dad taught Tim that all business deals start with eye contact and an assured gaze. Why couldn’t Tim’s Dad have included knives?) “This is just in case.”
Sighing, Tim wishes his cowl allowed for more expression of the eyebrows.
To mimic the incredulous nature of an eyebrow raise, Tim twirls his staff a little. Just a bit, really.
“I’ll stab you,” the man tells him, not quite convinced in the statement.
“I’ll hit you,” Tim replies, much more certain.
Scowling, the man lowers the knife a couple inches. A concession if there ever was one. “Fine.”
Not amicable in the slightest. Somewhat sensible though.
“I’m Vic,” Vic says, casually moving on.
(“Vic” does not suit this man, assuming that it’s a nickname (which Tim is). He’s in his mid twenties and all the more sharp for it. He has that young, hungry look in his posture, in his eyes that sets Tim a little on edge. He has a light, pink dusted skin tone and wide set shoulders. He’s probably from the Narrows, like Duke was. A real mix of people are from the Narrows. His real name is likely something like Victor, and that makes the entire picture Tim is painting in his mind’s eye twice as unlikely.)
“Red Robin,” Tim says, also moving on. Spilled milk and crying and all that. “I’ll cut to the chase. Are you willing to work for me?”
Vic makes that face again. The face that screams greed and opportunity.
“I’m sure we could come to an… agreement.”
“And your… friends?”
Vic flapped his hand. “Same thing really. They’ll probably agree to something I agree to.”
Tim hums, indecisive. “So your their spokesperson.”
Vic looked at Tim as though he was an idiot. “Yeah, sure.”
“Well Vic, I’ve got some terms and conditions here for you,” Tim pulls a sheaf of paper from his lovely utility belt. “Naturally, this contract isn’t legally binding, but this is the gist of your conditions, pay, and the expectations.”
Smiling, Vic tucks the papers away into his coat. Which is a shame, because Tim is great at facial ticks and wants to watch Vic’s face while he reads it.
“We can meet after you and your friends have had enough time to look it over,” Tim offers. “How about three days?”
Vic snorts. “I’ll give you our answer in one. Meet me tomorrow at the intersection before New Town. We’ll see about these conditions.”
As Vic walks away, Tim takes back his earlier assessment of his name. Despite the fact that it makes him sound like a cheap, small time crime boss in his late fifties, he has more wit to him than over half of the people Tim has encountered with that name. Hopefully he won’t turn out to be stupid. Hopefully.
Humming to himself, Tim takes to the rooftops. A mostly successful night, if Tim didn’t say so himself. And he does say so himself, so there. It’s nice when a plan slowly starts to lapse together.
“There he is!”
Gunshots fill the air. Tim dives to the harsh concrete of the roof (“Oop!”) and army crawls his way behind an AC unit. A bullet had clipped his shoulder and hip, with only the bullet to the hip causing any damage. The bullet hit his hip harshly, just penetrating past the armor of his suit. Not debilitating, but stinging like a bitch. Especially when Tim, in all his medical savvy, shoves his fingers into the wound and pulls out the bullet with a wet squelch. (Ew.)
Tim pulls liquid bandage from his utility belt, spraying on his would from where he crouches. It stems the sluggish bleeding, but not the sting. He probably has about seven seconds before more assailants double around the back of the building, likely to buy time for reinforcements to break into the building and file up the stairs. Tim just had to land on a building with roof access.
“Go around! And don’t let him get away!”
Yep. (Tim hates himself for being right.)
Projectile time.
Pulling several shurikens in one hand and smoke pellets in the other, Tim tosses a few pellets to his left and then to his right. Sure enough, bullets start firing indiscriminately at the smoke. Waste of ammo, in Tim’s opinion. But they don’t know that. Or that they’ve just given away their position entirely. (Really. Tim had only had a slight idea of where they were before. Now he knows exactly where to aim.)
This time, Tim throws the pellets to the areas the shooters are (just southeast of him and north of him. Looks like the second team of shooters only got halfway around the building). Tim probably has less than a minute before those reinforcements get up to the roof.
Tim waits past the inevitable gunfire, listening for them to cease before rising, tossing just a few more to cover himself on the roof. He chooses to go north, as there looked to be less gunmen than southeast, and throws his shurikens, more or less hitting every gun he meant to. The aimless flailing of one of the men make Tim miss his target, ruining a perfect score. Disappointing, but thank Batman for cowl optics.
Tim whistles sharply, throwing a jaunty wave when the gunmen turn sharply towards him.
“He’s over here!”
“Get him!”
The more impulsive, trigger happy of the men immediately attempt to fire at him. Only to have what is likely to be third degree burns inflicted upon their hands due to their guns being blown to pieces. Nasty, that is. (For such a powerful equalizer, guns are rather easy to force into malfunctions. Just barely blocking the barrel can cause the whole gun to go boom. Alfred taught Tim that, actually. Bruce… Bruce prefers to leave the gun lessons to him.)
Unfortunately for those guys… Tim thinks those are the Burnley Town Massive men attacking him. Which is… great. They shouldn’t have known he was in the area. Barbara herself had blocked surveillance of Tim for the night, for all that she couldn’t monitor him (her Birds on out of state for… something, Barbara will tell Tim if it’s important). Anyway, unfortunately for the BTM, the more trigger happen men happen to be three quarters of them. No gunman was safe from the fury of the guns, even the flailing one Tim had missed earlier. Judging by the relative caliber of the gun, they’re all relatively uninjured. Probably. Maybe?
Tim drops down that side of the building, landing feet first on a man’s shoulders, toppling him.
“He’s over here! He’s over here! He’s—“
Tim hits the remaining gunman over the head with his staff. Thanks for alerting the others, jackass.
Luckily, the reinforcements had only just gotten onto the roof, letting Tim sneak around the corner into the adjacent alleyway while they scramble into position amidst the still dissipating smoke.
Maybe Tim should head out for the night. He got what he came for, and is leaving with one more hole in his body than he really wanted to have. Recruiting pitch— done.
Vigilante business— not.
Well, never let it be said that Red Robin is a weenie.
Tim nimbly maneuvers through the alleyway. With any luck, the men from the southeast will be moving towards where they heard the commotion. Then all Tim will have to do is run around the building and come in on them from behind, hopefully without getting gunned down by the men on the roof. Hopefully.
Hey, maybe if he waits long enough, the men on the roof will come back down and they won’t have the high ground advantage. Tim likes that idea.
“What the fuck! Where did he go!”
Tim hustles to the corner of the building, peeking around the side to observe. Maybe they’ll give up in a bit. Tim likes to fight gangsters when they don’t know he’s coming.
The man yelling is not the biggest, nor the scariest. However, he does seem to be in charge. He’s yelling at— huh. A shock of purple enter’s Tim’s field of vision. The purple haired woman from before.
“I don’t know,” she snaps back. “I know where he was; I don’t know where he’s going .”
“If you had told us earlier,” the man thundered.
“I couldn’t have,” she yells back. “He was monitoring us. I called as soon as I could.”
Monitoring as in Tim was present and had eyes or monitoring as in she could tell that Tim had somehow hack the surveillance? Tim really hopes it’s the first one, because otherwise Tim will have to lose a valuable potential employee. Because he’s going to have to punch her. Snitches and all that.
“Bitch,” the man roars, raising his fist.
Tim glances up at the roof. Yep, the gunmen have retreated. Now to see when they’ll get themselves down and out the building…
The woman raises one of her hands defensively. “Don’t you dare!”
“Shut up!” The man’s hand comes down in a swing.
Tim would intervene, he really would, but the woman has had her hand rifling through her purse and— yep. Man just got pepper sprayed.
Crying out in pain, the man reels back, prompting the woman to make a quick escape. Another of the five men still standing lunge for her, but half heartedly. He looks as though he’d rather not catch her. Purple hair flutters in the stiff breeze of the Gotham night as she ducks around a block corner. Two men file in out of the building, guns held in a relaxed pose. Perfect.
“Didn’t see any sign of him,” one of the roof gunmen was saying to the lead gunmen, whose eyes are still scrunched in pain. “The smoke’s still pretty thick up there.”
“Damned Bat,” the other roof gunmen adds helpfully.
Tim creeps around the building.
“Let’s get the boys,” the leader grunts, slowly blinking open his eyes. “They’re all probably still lying there, the bastards.”
Ah, the sweet sound of complacency. It’s music to Tim’s ears.
Because Tim is never someone who changes a working system, he throws his grapple to swing himself feet first onto one of the roof gunmen’s shoulders, sending him crashing to the floor.
The rest of the crew shout in alarm, raising their guns. But Tim was prepared and they were not. A flash bang steals their sight away from them in a violent burst of light.
The lead gunman, however, had his eyes closed or something, so Tim gets pistol whipped for his troubles. Tim rolls back with the blow, stepping off the roof gunman gracefully and lashing out with his staff.
The lead gunman gets disarmed, and all the more angry for it. The others are slowly starting to shake their disorientation. Tim takes out the leader in a few more swipes and dives behind a garbage can just in time to avoid getting shot by the fist gangster to recover.
“Bombs away,” Tim mutters to himself, maybe mildly concussed.
He throws another flash bang.
Some of the men had the foresight to shut there eyes, but not all. Tim disarms and knocks out one man that leaps towards him, and then the other. He quick reels in his grapple to wrap up one man, who stumbles but does not fall. Good. Using the muddled state the man is in, likely from two consecutive flash bangs being fired practically in his face, Tim whirls them around releases the man, sending him as a careening projectile into two of his allies. They topple like bowling pins. Five down, two to go.
A bullet hits Tim in his right shoulder, which would be fine, except it’s at point-blank and at the shoulder that’s already been clipped by a bullet. Hissing, Tim switches his stance to lead with his left foot and arm instead of his right. He quickly disarms the shooter and uppercuts him in the chin with his staff. One left.
The last man is one without a gun, maybe Tim disarmed him earlier? Whatever. Tim makes quick work of him and that’s all seven gangsters down, including the four men on the other side of the building. Man is Tim tired.
Tim taps at his comm. “Nightwing, I’ve got eleven gang members down over here at the Burnley, four of which need medical attention.”
“Red Robin?” The comm crackles back. “I thought you weren’t on patrol tonight?”
Tim sighs. “Yeah, well, sometimes patrol finds you.”
Dick makes a noise that sounds a bit like an understanding snort. “I hear that. Any reason why you’re contacting me and not the GCPD?”
“Any reason why I can’t just talk to my favorite big brother?” Tim mocks, gingerly tending to his shoulder wound. He is going to need so much antiseptic tonight.
“Well, not unless you need something.”
“Untrue, Nightwing. Besides, I don’t have time to give the cops the rundown. I’ve got a couple of wounds that need some TLC.”
Dick hisses. “Copy. Bluebird is the closest to you, I’ll send her your way. She’ll call in and report in your stead, so you head home.”
Tim sighs, more than a little relieved. “Thanks, N.”
“And Red.”
“Yeah?”
“You will call me if you need anything.”
“Yeah, N.” Tim replies, smiling. “I will.”
(And if what Tim needs happens to be a pizza delivery from that family owned place that he likes— the one that’s in the opposite direction of both the Manor and his apartment— then Dick can’t exactly complain, can he?)
_____
As always, Oracle’s report does not disappoint.
Donovich “Vic” Strueski, a man unemployed because of past dealings in gang violence and knowledgeable of pharmaceuticals. Nothing huge on his record but assault and larceny. A truly gentlemanly gangster.
His five boys— and Marcia Jones, a middle aged women whose hand seems to be grafted to her pocket knife— are all much of the same. The only outlier is José Alvarez, a relatively nice man who just really, really hates CVS and adamantly refuses to work in anything like it. The man even has an honest to Batman degree from two years of collegiate pre-professional study. Obviously, he decided that a life of crime was better than a PharmD and the debt that came with it. It’s weird. Like, a lot weird.
Tim should put him in a managerial position. It would be interesting, at the very least.
All seven of them arrive with Vic at the intersection between the Burnley and New Town almost exactly twenty four hours later. Tim can appreciate the punctuality.
Tim very carefully does not rock on his heels. He’s a businessman right now. An employer. Not a vigilante.
“We all looked it over,” Vic tells Tim, an appraising look in his eyes.
Tim doesn’t want to let out a snappy ‘And?’ but it’s extremely difficult to restrain himself. Be stoic, boss-man. Like the Batman himself.
Marcia doesn’t pull her hand from her thigh, white knuckling her probably illegal knife, and Tom Davis doesn’t relax his shoulders from their braced stance, but Vic’s face breaks into a smile as he tosses back the papers Tim handed to him the night before. It’s not signed, mostly because Tim didn’t add a bottom line to sign on. Illegal business does not beget illegal contracts. There’s no point. How would Tim even fight that in court?
“How much extra will we get if we start tonight?”