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The problem with masks that were convenient to take on and off, the man without a name realized, as gravel crunched underfoot and the night wind touched his bare face, was that they weren't just convenient for you.
He grinned at Owlman even as the big bully tossed his nice shiny new crimson-polyurethane helmet aside like trash. "Hey, Feathers."
"So this is the Red Hood." The Owl raked cold eyes over him like a handful of talons, enumerating fine brown hair that flopped over big stupid ears; nose and chin too long for good looks; hazel eyes bloodshot; teeth slightly crooked; dismissed it all. "Disappointing."
"Well, I wanted to be Diego de la Vega, but I didn't have the budget." Red Hood (J to his friends, just J; he'd given up trying to figure out the rest of it) cracked his neck as an excuse to survey the scrubby lot outside the old Ace Chemical plant, where he had definitely not intended to be tonight. The ocean lapped at the edge of hearing, almost drowned out by traffic on the overpass, but there were no nearby signs of human presence. No likely interruptions. Even the nighttime security guard seemed to have wandered from his post.
This wasn't good, he knew. It wouldn't be great even if it was just the two of them, Owlman having a conservative fifty pounds of muscle on him in addition to body armor and edged weapons, but Talon was here, too, with perfect, even little teeth flashing like fangs in a wolf's jaw, hungry for blood. Talon never got angry, and he was only four feet tall, but honestly J would rather fight the boss.
Not that they were courteous enough to offer him a choice of partners.
They closed in from both sides, with the leisurely, confident stride of apex predators. Sort of feathery tigers, which was almost funny enough an image to cheer him up. The kids they'd used as bait had scattered already, at least; J wasn't sure if they'd been hired or ambushed, but the owlcat duo had lost interest in them as soon as J got into the open, and the kids'd had the sense to get out while they could. He fell back, knowing he would be cornered against the factory in another couple of yards. Needed a plan.
He'd been unmasked, which wasn't great, but they clearly wanted something besides his identity, such as it was. He had a policy of not giving them what they wanted.
"Running away?" the Owl mocked, took another step, and this was going nowhere fast.
"Well, hehe, you know what they say about he who fights and runs away…"
The Red Hood bolted, scattering marbles behind him as he went. Made it to the corner of the building without getting a throwing star in the back, swarmed up the chain-link fence and leaped from there, froglike and inelegant, onto the roof of the low shed adjoining the factory proper, and slithered through a half-open window into catwalks designed for the maintenance of giant halogen lights that were, at the moment, dark.
J crouched in dimness lit only by some virulently green vats roiling thirty feet below, whatever that was about, and tried to plan. This was the first time the Owl had come looking for him; usually it was Red Hood messing with Owlman's plans, so he had the opportunity to go into those encounters with all the gear he could possibly use, and several tricks in store. Right now, he had nothing; he'd been on his way home from giving Dulcita and Amacita a hand with convincing yet another pimp that they did not belong to him, and those marbles outside and the tire iron Talon had taken off him in the initial tangle were basically all the stuff he'd had left.
Nothing he needed to stick around and fight for in this trap, but how could he get out of here without being spotted? How long were they likely to keep looking?
A shadow moved against the darkness in the corner of his right eye. "Aw, darn," he groaned, as the tiny ninja death machine slammed into him and sent him right over the edge of the catwalk in a flutter of dark red cape.
He landed flat on his back on a lower, wider catwalk, at Owlman's feet. They totally planned that. Seriously, if they weren't such utter bastards he could really appreciate their flair. "Heya," he waved up, somewhat out of breath, and started to roll to his feet. The Owl kicked his hands from under him halfway through, and as his chin bruised on the metal walkway, planted a boot in the middle of his back. Ooh. He was starting to miss breathing.
Deep voice out of the darkness: "Are you afraid yet?"
"I guess I've got kind of a suspicion tonight's not looking to be a party," J admitted. "'zat count?"
Talon landed behind him, soft as a cat, and J's attempt to wriggle under the guardrail and lose himself under the catwalks and vats came to nothing under Owlman's heel.
"If you're too stupid to learn fear, at least we can make an example of you."
Definitely not a party.
The boy held his legs down. He probably couldn't have achieved anything by kicking anyway, but he would have liked a chance to try. J felt a bare-skinned childish knee digging into the back of his thigh and wondered if Talon was still tiger-smiling. Normally he liked smiles, but not that one. He gave his best shot at a mighty thrash.
But Owlman had a knee of his own in his spine and a boot on his outstretched arm, and the other arm twisted by a great strong hand on his wrist until the tendons screamed, and he'd gotten overconfident and now he was going to die. Drat, he thought.
Just that, like he'd missed the day when they were selling mint ice cream on special, or the new episode of one of his favorite TV shows; a sort of sharp pang of disappointment at missing out. Guess that's it; had a good run, old boy. We barely knew ye. Drat.
And, I hope someone returns my library books.
And then there was a heavy gauntlet taking a fistful of hair, thumb rough against the back of his ear as his head was wrenched up, and then cold steel between his lips and pain.
He screamed, but the scream broke after the first seconds, broke and screeched out of him in fits of agonized, disbelieving laughter. As something desperate and animal in him kicked fruitlessly against Talon's grasp and locked neck muscles to keep his other cheek pressed safely to the floor, as blood poured down his throat and choked him, he laughed and laughed.
His neck couldn't stand long against the strength of Owlman's arm, of course, and he found himself all too soon gasping into a pool of blood, with the flaps of severed cheek muscle folded back against themselves by the rough force bearing down. Fresh-sliced flesh crunched between his teeth and the freezing walkway, a single rivet clicking obscenely against the side of an newly exposed molar, everything was salt and metal-tang, and the knife was set again to the remaining corner of his mouth.
"Beg for mercy," the Owl rumbled. Barely bothering to imply there was a chance of it being granted.
J could see the man's stony face out the corner of his right eye, lips expressionless as any beak, soulless round eyes and those stupid little ear-tuft points at the top. His snigger came out as a sort of bubbling whinny. "Y'mushht bhe jhokin."
Slice.
It should have been easier the second time. He knew what to brace himself for.
It was worse.
"That should teach you to smile," grated the Owl, as they let him go. There wasn't even time to fill his lungs and wonder if it was over before the same hard hands flipped him over, lifted him by the front of his shirt, and held him, one handed, against the safety railing, like he was a scarecrow full of nothing but straw, and not a person stuffed with blood and guts and awkwardly jutting bone.
Owlman's grim look bent into a smirk for just a second, and he reached up with the other hand, took the Red Hood by the chin in a cool, deliberate gesture that was not quite gentle, and jerked clenched teeth apart, so that the muscles tore that half-inch more toward the hinge of J's jaw with a soft, meaty rip that seemed to startle even Talon. Glasgow grin. Cheshire smile. Very traditional. Everyone's mad here.
And maybe that would have been all, if he had whimpered or begged or even been silent, his ruined face the example, a lesson in the price of defiance that would persist the rest of his life, whenever anyone saw him. If he'd had the sense to bend or break. If he'd done anything the Owl could take as victory.
But instead he laughed, an inhuman bark spilling from the wide lipless gash that was now his mouth, because Owlman had never understood, would never understand the sheer absurdity of it all, of his own brutal serious self.
"Y' don' ged i', duh ya?" he bubbled as he hung there, snickering, looking death in the face and unable, no matter how he tried, unable to be afraid.
"What?" demanded the Owl, his voice so deep and hollow and nothing like the uncanny shriek of the real bird. "What do you think I don't understand?"
"Why," J gasped out, shaking with laughter that was beginning to hurt almost as much as his face, tears prickling from his eyes and trickling down to mingle with the blood, and sting salty in the wounds. It really sounded more like ouuhaih, but it seemed like he was understood, and the Owl stood there, holding him, waiting for the question.
"Why," J asked again. He'd slapped one of his hands over Owlman's wrist without noticing, as though to wrestle for control, and now he made the other uncurl, flung it out to one side, palm open for giving and for taking. Blinked tears out of his eyes and tried to smile, even though it hurt more than anything he could ever remember, tugging at muscles that ended now in screaming emptiness, and he couldn't even imagine how he looked. He bent his head forward, and his captor was human enough to respond a little to the cue, closing the space between them a fraction to listen to J whisper:
"Why did the Owl cross the road?"
Teeth a bird shouldn't have ground with sudden fury, and J burst out laughing once again, loud and wild and hyena-high, droplets of blood speckling the Owl's feathered mask and broad chin. "Doncha geddit?" he asked. "Ya know th' punshline?"
"We're done here," said the serious, serious man.
And threw him over the rail.
Roiling green hissed as it closed over him, and the man without a name had less than an instant to understand before his whole world became pain. He could close his eyes but not the slashes in his face. And the acid was flowing in as the blood was flowing out and this was exactly what it felt like to be eaten alive.
Whether the Owl and his Talon stayed for an hour or a minute, it was all one. Whether he broke, after all, when there was no one left to laugh at, and what was to become of the pieces if he did, it remained to be seen. Whether he escaped the vat somehow, without remembering, or was discovered, fished out, and hastily dumped away from the factory before anyone could lose their job, it hardly mattered. He came to with the soft lap of the surf pouring salt on his acid-burned limbs like a curse from his oldest friend, and dragged himself a second time from the sea.
Gotham took him back, as she always, always would.