Gotham Mouse, Paris Bug

Chapter 9

Bet I can clear two rooftops.”

“Bullshit!” A beat. “You’re on.”

Tim frowned a little at the exchange, he was taking the night to solo patrol. He heard the voices on a rooftop, yet the second voice sounded suspiciously like- No way. Red Robin spun around, quickly swinging around a taller building to see the strangest thing he’d seen (that wasn’t a hallucination) that day.

There stood the new hero in Gotham, Multimouse, effortlessly holding Red Hood above her head in preparation to throw him.

Multimouse had been a bit of a shock to Tim when she’d first shown up. Cameras seemed to miraculously power off if she ever tried taking off her mask with one nearby. She had yet to kill anyone, but she was constantly heavily wounding them. Rumor had it that she was ruthless, uncaring whether the criminals lived or died.

She took them down in seconds, letting the enemy get banged up along the way with no hesitation whatsoever.

It was honestly kinda inspiriting, if not morbid. So he leaned against the wall behind him, still alert. “If you can clear three rooftops I’ll buy you a coffee.”

Multimouse, honest to God squeaked turning around with Red Hood still held above her head. She had the bluest eyes he had ever seen; like God had just decided to put some leftover sky in them or something. When she saw him she just smirked brightly, moving back to throw a now protesting Red Hood. “You’re on.”

Later, a barista would nearly faint when Red Robin begrudgingly bought both Red Hood and Multimouse coffees.

After that, Red Robin would often join the other two on their patrols. He would constantly be shocked at their dynamic, how they made little games out of taking down robberies and muggings. At first, he didn’t know how they could take this so light to make a game out of it.

That was until he started to see the shadows in their eyes when they saw some of the more disturbing crimes.

Red Robin then realized it was a way of coping for them, they constantly saw so much darkness. And one of the ways they would keep themselves sane was to goof around, not enough to slack off, but enough to make people feel more at ease around them. Multimouse would always joke around as she talked to near victims, comforting them until help arrived.

Tim was seeing Multimouse’s effect on Jason in their civilian lives as well.

He would check in on Tim more, on nights where nothing about a case was making sense. Maybe it was just to bring him some more coffee or shoo him off to bed, but occasionally he would just pull up a chair, and be Tim’s rubber duck.

Tim didn’t know why the two cared for each other so much, and he was dying to know. But there was no way to figure out Multimouses identity without following her home. Sure, he picked up whatever clues he could, researching it occasionally, but there was no point. When she left to unmask, the cameras would shut down. It was like magic, and the one time he saw Multimouse divide into about thirty mini versions of himself he knew it was magic.

Or at the very least a good imitation of it.

So Red Robin showed up to patrols more regularly, spending time with the duo and seeing them in action first hand. He tried to stop Red Hood from shooting people so much, but there was nothing he could really do about Multimouse.