metalogs | [Open] Marching to the beat of his drum

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[Open] Marching to the beat of his drum

Who: Jason Todd

robintohood and you
What: Various antics as a civilian and as Red Hood
When: Throughout March
Where: Central City
Content Warnings: PG-13 level violence

Jason:

[The weather is gradually warming up and moods are lifting up for people! Well, lifting up for most people. For the owner of the Descendant Karaoke Bar and Lounge, he’s just briskly working as usual. Maybe he’s being less talkative and more introverted than usual but sometimes that’s what happens when one is busy. He even sometimes still puts on a smile to make customers feel more welcomed.

But that’s assuming people are following his rules. If otherwise, then his vocabulary gets colorful as he snarls out statements like…]

Pull that shit again and your brains get splattered across the floor.

[Okay, maybe how much rougher he’s gotten this month when he’s literally throwing and kicking out belligerent patrons might indicate he’s in a certain other kind of Mood. Don’t worry. He doesn’t usually bite.

On a note that can’t possibly be related, the 4-eyed black and yellow talking cat that used to hang out at the Descendant hasn’t been seen in a while]

Red Hood:

[The Backbreakers are as active as ever in Central City. They had a few setbacks over the last few months but that hasn’t kept them down. They’re maintaining their territory. Illicit goods are still being handled. The racketeering business is sturdy. The chop shops are always having a good time. If you ask a local in their territory, they might say the gang members are also friendly neighborhood vigilantes.
The Backbreakers are Society members after all. Overall, the gang’s recovery has been okay.

So in their territory during an evening, it’s possible you might see the Backbreakers’ leader with a couple of his people outside of a dive bar.

Though the Red Hood’s helmet hides his facial expressions, the way he’s whaling at a rule breaker might indicate he’s not in the best of moods at the moment. Blood splatters on his helmet also indicate how brutal he’s being tonight. He then drags his screaming victim by the hair across the sidewalk]

It’s time to get back to basics.

Wildcard:

((OOC: Got something else in mind? Hit me up! I always welcome new CRs as well. My contact information is on this journal's profile and I'm in the game's Discord server. Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns as well. My contact information is on this journal's profile and I'm in the game's Discord server. Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns as well. I also have a feedback post.))

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His shoulder is going to hurt a lot later but Jason keeps a tight grip on his grapple gun. He feels the jerk and can guess what his opponent is trying to do. So instead of resisting and pulling against, Jason presses the withdraw button on his grapple gun and zips forward, right towards Donnie and ready to punch him.

Red Hood reacts faster than him at that point, but then physics aren't on Donnie's side when he'd already been yanking on the line. The other comes too fast for him to evade, not when he's in the process of pushing up onto his feet.

But it doesn't mean he's not going to try to defend himself, even when Hood's coming in swinging. The odds are still in Red Hood's favor as Donnie tries to twirl his staff around to catch that fist before it can connect, but it's a little harder when the guy's line is attached to it.

The zip line in danger of getting tangled makes things tricky but Jason at least now has his adversary right in front of him. His fist hits Donnie’s staff. A second later, a double-edged sword appears out of thin air and into that same hand.

“Hi. Going somewhere?” He says in an inappropriately casual tone.

It's a precarious position to be in. Kind of scary, actually, being on the receiving end, but behind the mask, Donnie finds himself almost grinning. Maybe he's losing it, maybe he's reached his emotional quota and everything's just broken but the buzz of adrenaline takes away the edge of any real fear he rationally should have. But if rationality had a place here, he wouldn't have bolted or led a killer on a chase across rooftops.

"Was kind of planning on it," he replies, his voice purposely distorted, almost monotone as it filtered out. He keeps a firm grasp on his staff, gunmetal accented with metallic purple, his eyes unseen but flicking between Red Hood's weapon and the man himself for any tells that he might make another move.

"Nice of you not to shoot me though."

Jason knows his opponent is hiding his voice but something about the purple accents feels familiar to him.

“Figured we should have a nice chat first,” Jason replies, still in an arrogant tone.

While one sword is pressed against Donnie’s bo, Jason summons another sword and uses that to try to stab the turtle.

"You really are scary in business-mode."

Donnie'd been anticipating the other blade. He's also got a brother who uses dual weapons, although to be fair, they'd never done any really serious sparring. The moment he sees the other weapon appear, he's already jerking his staff around, twisting it at a slight angle so the first blade scrapes down its shaft and slices through the cable wrapped around it to free it up.

Red Hood's still moving faster than he'd calculated, and he tries to twist to avoid the other sword when he realizes he can't get his staff around in time. He can feel it graze the edge of his plastron as it slices past his jacket. That could have been messy, not that it doesn't still hurt, but he backs off now that his staff is free, holding it in a defensive stance.

Nothing like a little pain to start wicking off the adrenaline, the rational part of his mind trying to offer a suggestion, maybe drop the charade now before you get yourself killed, huh pal? But that's the easy way out, not that Donnie's quite figured out how the hard way would play out, he hasn't really been planning ahead for any of this.

The longer Jason fights and listens to the mysterious figure, the more he feels like he should know them. It’s part of why he hasn’t given up yet. Another reason is that the thrill of the chase and now the adrenaline of the fight is entirely distracting him from the aching sense of loss he’s been feeling this month.

Strip down to some basic truths and things feel less complicated. And right now, a truth Jason is focused on is someone had been trying to spy on him and tried to flee. He couldn’t just leave that hanging.

Jason chuckles when Donnie manages to get himself free of the zip line.

“What can I say? I’m a professional. Like what you saw?” He taunts before charging again with both swords at the ready.

"I've seen better," GameOvR says, not that he'd ever tell Leo that. He spins his staff, just as ready to fend off. He's hanging onto this feeling, anchored in the moment where he doesn't have to think too much about all the things that had happened, or the things that could have happened. There's nothing else to focus on except the masked man in front of him and the weapons he wields.

It's exhilarating. It's dangerous too, no lie there, and he's not sure if Red Hood will be angry if he finds out, but Donnie tosses that care to the wind as he spins his weapon to block and thrust the blunted ends when he finds the chance to.

Jason’s blades make contact with the staff and he’s forced to jump to the side to try and dodge. Donnie’s weapon successfully hits him but between the body armor, the stamina, sheer stubbornness, Jason not out yet. He remains armed and is only keeping a short distance from Donnie.

“Did anyone ever tell you no one likes a snoop?”

Donnie pulls his staff back, watching Red Hood closely.

"It's not really snooping when you're not even trying to be quiet about what you're doing," he points out. "I'm just a guy passing through." Which is largely true, even if he's probably suspiciously dressed by Jason's standards.

“Yeah and I’m just a businessman,” Jason retorts.

He charges forward again and attempts to slash at Donnie with one of his swords.

"It's not illegal to multitask."

Metal rings as Donnie swiftly brings his tech-bō up to meet that strike, aiming to keep it moving aside then directly stopping its momentum. If he can slide it past him, he can keep his own staff's momentum up as he spins it to jerk the other end up towards Red Hood's chin.

Jason jumps one step back and just barely misses the uppercut. There really is something very familiar about the way his opponent is using his weapon and not just because a couple of Jason’s younger brothers are also bo users.

“Nah but costumed weirdos tend to have agendas,” Jason quips.

Donnie's in his element, the staff practically an extension of himself for how he wields it. He presses the offensive once Red Hood's moving back.

"Spoken from experience, right?"

“Naturally,” Jason says, unashamed.

One sword clashes hard against the staff. Meanwhile, Jason’s other hand drops the other sword and a taser hidden in his sleeve slides out. He turns it on and slams it hard against the staff.

He'd been getting cocky. By the time Donnie realizes what Red Hood's got in his hand as he blocks the first sword, it's a second too late.

"....."

...it's a bit anticlimactic as the charge releases, and for a brief moment the turtle holds his breath. A second later, he's still standing.

"Titanium's only got an electrical conductivity of roughly three percent."

And then he's pushing back with the bō, trying to swing at Red Hood again.

Welp. Lesson learned. He turns and uses the arm still holding a sword to block the staff before whipping out one of his handguns to shoot Donnie in the arm.

Somehow, Donnie'd forgotten all about the gun. He'd gotten caught up in a good old melee fight, his cockiness only stoked for the impromptu science lesson. Locked as he is with his staff against the blade, there really isn't much time to move when the gun goes off.

He's never been shot before, and it all happens so fast that his brain's not fully registering it, save for the burning spike of a sensation in his arm, somehow feeling both hot and cold. He'd tried to move but it hadn't been enough, and now he's hardly moving for the shock of what had happened, taking a step back, grip from his shot arm faltering around his staff.

Jason’s not looking to kill for now. He takes a step back after the gunshot.

“Now how about you answer a few questions for me?” He calmly asks.

The helmeted figure lets his staff drop with a dull clang, hand twitching almost indecisively before he presses it over the wound. He sucks in a hiss of a breath, deactivating the voice distortion on the helmet.

"...okay, b-but can we promise not to tell Huvrye or my brother about this..?"

Jason freezes when he hears Donnie’s voice. Shit. Jason realizes he should’ve known better. The stealth and speed-based moves, the bo, the purple accents throughout the outfit. It’s all obvious. He should’ve clocked all of that in much sooner. He was raised and trained by the world’s greatest detective. But no. He was too stupid to see that. He chose to be just a brutish thug. He was being a fuck-up again.

“What the hell?” He blurts out, still trying to comprehend what had really happened. Evidently, it wasn’t a case of some unknown spy intruding on him.

"Is that the question you're actually going with because I'm not sure how to answer that." He's not even thinking really hard on his own answers, as much as he'd rather not think about how much his arm hurts. Not much luck on the latter.

How do you treat a gunshot wound? Donnie's trying to work it out and drawing blanks. Everything's out of order. He messed up. He messed up, and he shouldn't have... Shouldn't have what? He doesn't know anymore.

Jason pulls out from his jacket a pack of military-grade gauze. He then rips it open and starts to treat Donnie.

“Are you part of a guild?” He asks.

Jason knows he might face serious consequences soon for the shooting but the more pressing matter is making sure Donnie is healed up. He has to focus on one emergency at a time to get through tonight.

Donnie doesn't answer right away, still trying to pull his focus back together. His helmeted head lifts again towards Red Hood when he realizes the other's moved closer, hesitantly pulling his hand away to let him have a better look at his arm wound. He's torn between looking himself and not wanting to.

"...y-yeah," he says after a moment, not completely sure why he's being asked, but after another second or two he adds, "Society."

Edited 2024-03-23 04:57 (UTC)

“Good. That’ll make things easier,” Jason says. “Just in case we can’t get a magic healer, what kind of doctor do you need?”

His voice is even as panicking isn’t going make an already grim situation better.

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