Author's Note: More Jason. Trying to decide where in his timeline this story narrative fits. I'm going to say sometime just before the end of his fifteenth year on the planet, closer to sixteen than not. I love Jason Todd, as a character and an ass-kicker. Short and sweet. Jason quells a riot while Bruce is away. After the fallout, Alfred is given a special task by the boy. May write more if well received.

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Soldier 2

Bruce is out of town on 'business'. He always is when the shit hits the fan. Right now, a mass riot in the Bowery is in full swing. Assholes are taking merch by the boatload. Windows are getting smashed. Poor schleps are getting their faces ground into concrete. Things are randomly catching fire. A patrol car's been flipped on its roof. Twenty feet away, both cops are cowering in a blind alley as the frenzied mob moves in for the kill. Backup is on its way, but it won't get here fast enough. In ninety seconds, both of them are dead or worse…not dead. That's my cue, just before the bombs fall. This is where Robin makes a difference. I drop down from the rooftops into the alley, blocking the cops from view. The mob, so loud and full of itself a minute ago, gets really quiet. I smile.

"You're all fucked." I shout over the divide between us, "I've seen everything. Batman might take prisoners, but I sure as hell don't. Unless you want a free broken arm or some amateur cosmetic surgery on your faces, drop your weapons, lie face-down and wait for the sirens to send you on your way. Either way, this ends now. Step another foot and I will kick the living shit out of each and every one of you."

"Good luck, kid! There's fifty of us and only one of you. This is a done deal." Some retard from the front of the crowd yells. The vanguard all advance together, three abreast. I'm not scared. Fifty isn't enough to put me down. Hell, I'd take a hundred before I gave my ground. So, I walk forward to meet them head-on. They think they know pain. They think they can hurt me. In less than ten seconds, I'm going to show them the truth. There's nothing left to break inside me, nothing left to feel pain. Empathy is for rookies, compassion too. All I need is a face to smash and I'm off to the races. And that's just what I get.

Mr. Big Mouth himself takes the first swing with his bat. I duck and drop on his ass with a two-fisted nutcracker. The other two are already too close to react and I snap one guy's collarbone with an elbow smash before side-kicking the other in the head, knocking him unconscious at my feet. Big Mouth still has wind to shriek like a girl so I slam my heel into his jaw to fracture it and put him to sleep. Collar bone is still awake too, despite going into shock. I uppercut him just to make sure. The mob looks a little less keen now.

"That's three-nothing." I call to them before backheeling the bat into my right hand from the ground, "Who's got the stones to close? Anybody want to see if they can strike me out?" I ask slinging the bat over my shoulder. A group of six rush forward, even though the alley's only wide enough for a max of three. This is almost too easy. I don't need to swing for the fences, just the kneecaps. First four go without fuss. Last two try to mix it with me, swinging their own melee weapons at my kneecaps. Dumb move. Really dumb, fucking move. I dodge back a step and then smash my knee into the guy's jaw before he can stand back up again from the swing. Out cold. The other guy gets two more chances to mangle me but misses them both. His reward is a skull cracker. After those six are piled at my feet, the bum rush starts. Survival mode.

Fancy moves and thinking won't keep me or the cops breathing now. Smack-talking them is a waste of breath too. I need every scrap of air my lungs can hold to get through this problem. Now I swing for the fences. It's me versus a tsunami of human flesh. I get popped. Head. Back. Ribs. My legs and arms get clawed at. Blood is drawn. Lines are crossed. I go down to one knee but snap back up. No-one breaks through me. Nobody gets closer to the cops. I start biting when the bat is knocked from my hand by a cheap punch. Ears are torn. I think I get a nose too, right on the bridge. It takes longer than I thought it would for the mob's frenzied mentality to fall away. Ten minutes and around twenty-two bodies get the penny to drop. I'm not moving. It's their will against mine, a battle not even Bruce and Al could win. And just like that, I singlehandedly hold back the tide. Most of them turn and run, but it's too late for backsies in this game. I see the sirens before I hear them. There's a whole sea of them hammering it over the bridge. Another minute, and they'll be nowhere for these rioting assholes to flee to.

I decide my leg stretch isn't over yet. So, I give chase and knock a handful of them down like bowling pins. They all eat a few punches for their troubles. A really common mistake a lot of rioters make is they think we don't hit women. Not true. Anyone who hits me, a child, is fair game, ladies included. So, when they try to claw me with sharp nails, I sock them in the face just the same. So far, I've put down seven of them out of my total of thirty. Everyone else is going to wriggle through the net unless I can herd them like the sheep they are. I promised every one of them an ass-whooping if they were dumb enough to try their luck. I pride myself on always delivering. I fire my grapnel and take to the air, aiming to land just in front of the leading edge of the mob, which is still struggling to thin itself out in the narrow streets. Ten seconds later, I just about manage it. Patrol cars screech to a halt behind me, blocking all the exits and fencing everybody in. The twenty-odd remaining rioters all stop dead as red and blue lights flash against every reflective surface in sight.

"Drop your weapons and lie face-fucking-down on the ground before I really lose my temper." I shout at them. Without their ringleaders and having roughly twenty guns trained on the softer parts of their bodies, everybody's a lot more cooperative. Captain Jack Leigh, from the Downtown Gotham precinct, walks over to me once the situation's under complete control and cuffs are being slapped on by the dozen.

"Your boss sitting this one out, kid?" He asks as I fish a broken cigarette out from my tunic. Fuck. I really wanted a smoke. I glance at Jack. He smirks. "You think I'm going to give you a smoke in front of all my men?"

"Come on, Jack, I just held off a mob on my own and saved two of your guys' asses: I don't even get one for that?"

"Okay first, like I've told you three times already, it's Captain Leigh, not Jack. Second, unless you want to go into custody with all your new friends for being a wiseass as well as a vigilante, stop pushing." I roll my eyes under the mask and sigh. Guy's always been uptight. I also think he doesn't like me operating in his part of town, even if I am doing all the heavy lifting for him.

"Can I at least get a 'thank you'…Captain Leigh?"

"Yeah, you can get a thank you, kid. Thank you for not beating the crap out of all of them. How about next time, you try not to shatter anyone's collarbone or give a third of them a concussion?"

"Yeah? How about next time, I let your boys get fucking killed by the crowd instead of do everything I can to save them? I hear an autopsy's a lot less paperwork than an accident report these days." I snap at him. He glares back.

"You'd better get out of here before I change my mind, boy." I think about it, about squaring up to this jumped-up bureaucrat and giving him a real piece of my mind. But he's not worth it. They all know what I did. They'll remember that. I turn to leave. "Your predecessor would've handled this better. That kid had class." Jack adds. I stop moving. Raw nerve touched. Last year I would've hit him for saying something like that to me. But I know better. I turn back and smile.

"We both know the kid before me would've been killed tonight if he'd faced down the same odds I just did. This city doesn't need class, Jackie Boy…it needs me. Have a nice night." He mutters something under his breath, but I don't care. I fire my grapnel, get on the rooftops and head for the bike.

"Good Lord." Al says pulling another wood splinter out of my scalp. He presses the rag against it to mop up the latest blood. "That is the seventeenth splinter. What on earth did they hit you with?"

"Snooker cue. I knew it wasn't a pool cue because of how long it was." I tell him through slightly gritted teeth. It only hurts a little. There's a vague stinging along the whole right side of my head from where I got hit, but nothing more.

"You're lucky you don't need more than a stitch or two. Normally, such brutality is nothing short of six, and that is if the implement does not shatter." He tells me. I shrug.

"Thick skin I guess, Al. Hard head too."

"Something you and Master Bruce share in common."

My butcher's tab barely runs past bruises and strains. The scratches on my arms and legs sting, but not anymore than being scratched by a run through thorn bushes. Ribs are bruised, but not broken. No concussion either. All in all, I'm good. After Al's finished the two stitches I need to close the biggest gash on my head, he says I can go to bed. I ask when Bruce is coming back. He says he doesn't know, can't even take a guess. Figures. I ask if he can do me a solid. As usual, Al is totally onboard with anything he can do to make all this isolation and solo-act shit easier. He doesn't expect me to ask for what I tell him, but I know he likes the idea.

"Master Bruce will be somewhat upset to learn of this, young man." The old guy informs me as I lie in bed twenty minutes later. He's probably right. Bruce has been reading me Frankenstein for the last six weeks and seems to really like it. I'm sure the big guy will be pissed when he finally comes back and finds we've finished it, but fuck him. He shouldn't disappear. I'm not putting my life on hold for him. Al shouldn't either. I shrug.

"Fuck him, Al. There's plenty more books for him to read me. If he throws a hissy fit about it, tell him this." I flip him the bird from the position on my side. "He'll know what it means." Al smiles at that and nods.

"I am sure he will."

He starts off sat in the chair by the bed. After a couple of paragraphs, I decide this isn't working for me. I get him to sit on the empty side of the bed. The old guy's a sport, so he does it. About four more paragraphs in, I shift my head into his lap. I wouldn't do this kind of thing with Bruce. I don't feel comfortable with it. Al's a different story. He doesn't even stop reading when I do this. All he does is balance the book in one hand and puts the other one around my shoulder, thumbing it in that way only guys completely at ease with their sexuality can. It feels nice. Al gets it. I'm only a soldier on the streets. Everywhere else I'm just a fucked-up kid who needs some serious TLC. Bruce doesn't register that sometimes. Most of the time. But Al knows when to move in. More importantly though, Al knows when to back off. He'd comb through my hair if I didn't have all the gashes in it. He'd say nice things to me if I just didn't want to hear it tonight. He gets it. I don't need a superhero, just someone who doesn't have to try too hard to show that they love me. Like Al. He says enough and he does enough that I never doubt how he feels about me.

At the end of the day, it's the only 'thank you' I need.