Archive of Our Own ^beta

It's hard out here for a vigilante tentacle monster. Not that Jason wants to think about being a tentacle monster; in fact, he takes great care to lock those thoughts away in a mental box labeled "Do Not Touch" (a skill honed by every protegé of the master of emotional repression). It's just that when the new moon rears its unseeable head each month, Jason's got no choice but to think about it.

He sits down hard on the edge of a weather-worn Bowery rooftop. The alleyway is empty, save for a pair of raccoons hellbent on breaking into a dumpster. A clang echoes through the calm when he kicks the top of the rusted fire escape beneath him. With a real foot, not one of his stupid tentacles. Ugh.

Stupid tentacles, stupid new moon, stupid magical therapy treatment that'll take at least another year before he's finally cured of his affliction.

The comms crackle to life in Jason's ear. "Squidboy, report."

Jason rolls his eyes. It's a doubly pointless gesture since no one's around and his helmet is on, but he figures his voice conveys it. "Get a new joke, Robin." He pauses. "And a new codename, while you're at it."

"Boys."

"He started it," Jason shoots back, like the mature adult he is. "But fine. Whatever. Slow night, no injuries. Two muggers near the Batburger on Fradon disarmed without incident." He makes sure to emphasize that last bit to head off any interrogation. New moon night is not the night to test his frayed nerves.

Tim's whiny voice cuts in again. "Because they saw your Cthulhu ass and shat themselves."

A tentacle reflexively reaches for the brass knuckles on Jason's belt. He doesn't respond to the dig beyond a wordless growl, because he'd rather die again than give Tim the satisfaction of being right.

Red Hood used to be feared for his fighting prowess. He was known as a ruthless combatant and an expert marksman, the scourge of Gotham's underbelly with a penchant for scarlet. Now, criminals fear the thing he turns into once a month more than they do the fighting skills he displays all month long.

His mind had been half-made up already, but this interaction seals it. Jason's got shit to do that doesn't involve standing around any longer in Gotham's polluted gloom wearing an Atlantean-modified suit.

"Calling it a night," he informs the comm line. "Got other shit to finish." He taps the button to disconnect before anyone can get a word in.

The grapple gets him home faster, but walking lets him stew longer. Jason heaves himself over the fire escape, swinging down from landing to landing with well-timed tentacles. They're his short-range grapple for one night a month.

It's a small mercy that this neighborhood has little in the way of nightlife. There's the occasional car that passes by, and a couple night owls keeping to themselves, but Jason escapes being a spectacle. He keeps his tentacles tucked against his body anyway, because from afar he'd just look like a particularly top-heavy bruiser.

When he's halfway home and fully lost in the maze of his thoughts, a strange chirp cuts through Gotham's usual din.

"MEEP!"

Jason whirls around, instinctively dropping into a defensive stance: left hand kris, right hand Glock, rear tentacles crowbar.

He squints. There's something pink and vaguely round perched on top of the bus shelter. Is it an animal? Warily, Jason steps forward for a closer look.

It's a tiny…octopus creature? With big round eyes, looking like it's about to have a panic attack.

"Meep!" it chirps again.

Now, Jason's been trained in two separate lifetimes to absorb the details of his surroundings. A lapse in vigilance can spell death. He tells himself that's why his brain counts the number of arms on the octopus creature, then counts again when it doesn't add up. Seven arms, no sign of amputation. Which would make it not an octopus, but a…heptapus. Septapus? Is he looking at the latest victim of Gotham toxin mutations?

"That better not be a Joker-pus," Jason mutters. He crosses his arms, and a couple tentacles for good measure.

The septapus's eyes lock on him. Instead of freaking out further, the standard reaction to Jason during the new moon, it visibly relaxes. It breaks into a grin, toothy like a toddler and full of relief.

"Oooooh!" it calls and stretches its arms way out. Jason barely has time to register the thought that the septapus would fit right into the Dibny household before it's flinging itself off the bus shelter and onto Jason's face.

Smack.

Jason's hand flies up to peel the septapus off his helmet, but it crawls off onto his shoulder before he can. He feels it lift up his nearest tentacle and wrap itself up into a snug burrito.

"Uh…" Jason glances over at it. "You good?"

The septapus pokes its head out momentarily. "Meep," it confirms, then burrows back into its tenta-cocoon.

"Alright then." He shrugs the shoulder that doesn't have a septapus curled up on it, then resumes his apartment-ward trek. This is the strangest thing he's seen all patrol, but this is Gotham. It barely charts in the grand scheme of his city's weirdness.

The next two blocks pass uneventfully, giving Jason time to think about the rest of his night. At the top of his to-do list is firing off one last batch of grad apps, just in case. His heart's long since been set on the Comp Lit program at U of Star, and he knows his application is strongly competitive, but Jason knows better than to count anything as a surety. He's intimately familiar with the universe dashing his hopes and dreams.

Whoosh.

Jason freezes at the sound of something passing overhead. A big green kite soars above the avenue, lit from electric lights below in the absence of a moon. Figures.

"Seriously?"

Off the clock means off the clock, so Jason's not about to chase down Kite Man. Schoolwork and spiraling about his future take precedence over one of Gotham's more ridiculous rogues. It's no skin off his back to inform the active patrollers, though.

When it's almost flown out of sight, the kite turns and starts back down the street again. Jason shoots it one last glance before patching into the open patrol line.

It becomes immediately clear that for some reason, Steph is attempting to explain some meme that neither Jason nor Bruce are online enough to understand. Tim's as much of an internet addict as she is, but his whiny voice is missing from her one-woman edutainment podcast. That's Jason's gain, honestly.

"Kite Man casing 47th," he cuts in. "Reason unknown."

The septapus creeps up Jason's shoulder, still wrapped securely in its protective tentacle. It leans in toward Jason's comm. "Eep," it adds insistently.

Of course, it's Bruce who instantly responds. "Hood. What was that."

"Don't worry about it."

Jason shuts his comms back off. Partially because Bruce hates not knowing something, and partially out of concern for the septapus.

"Hey, why're you trembling?" Jason reaches up to stroke the inexplicable tuft of fur on its head. "Is it the Big Bad Bat, or was it Kite Man?"

The septapus stares past him, its wide eyes fixed on the skies. That answers that question.

"You just…sit tight there, bud. I guess." Jason gives the septapus his best attempt at a reassuring pat and questions what's become of his life in the past forty-odd minutes. Red Hood, prodigal Bat of the East End, protector of defenseless creatures that remind him of his own ugly form.

If his tentacles were cute like baby septapus arms, maybe new moons wouldn't be so bad.

They manage to get another half block before Kite Man rematerializes. This time, he swoops down in front of them. Jason cringes at the man's landing. For someone who's supposed to be a master of kites, that looked rough.

"Why are you here, Kite Man?"

The man growls, disengaging his kite so it falls to the street behind him. He stalks forward and jabs an accusing finger at Jason. "You think you're so clever? Kite Man's got eyes."

Jason blinks. What? He hasn't interacted with Kite Man directly since, well, his own rogueish days. His hands ball into fists, readying for a fight. "I don't know what you're talking about, man."

"Not you," Kite Man says dismissively. He glares at Jason's shoulder. "Show your face, you little klepto."

The septapus shrinks in on itself with a mournful "Eep."

It takes Jason a moment to process this whole encounter, and when he does, his demeanor shifts from intimidating to incredulous. "You're trying to fight an animal… a baby animal… who you claim robbed you."

Kite Man huffs. "It stole my altimeter."

Okay, time out. Jason goes to pinch the bridge of his nose, only for his fingers to smack into his mask. Babs better not be getting footage of that. The little creature on his shoulder is tiny, yet somehow Kitey's gotten the impression that it's some kind of thief extraordinaire. Catwoman's got pockets that can store loot larger than the septapus.

"You're nuts."

"Am I?" Kite Man pulls a parachute knife from some hidden compartment in his suit and lunges. "Give me my altimeter back, or sushi's on the menu tonight!"

Jason ducks, curling another tentacle around the septapus. Kevlar shields his squishy human parts, but his exposed tentacles are free to hurt like a bitch. He unsheathes his crowbar and pivots, only for—

"MRAAAAAH!"

Something rockets out of the nearest alleyway and tackles Kite Man to the ground. When Jason's eyes adjust to the sight, he realizes their savior is a…four-legged shark creature wearing a camping backpack with a fishtank lashed to it. It growls at Kite Man, despite having managed to knock the man unconscious, then wrests the knife out of his hand and tosses it into the street. That's not how Jason would go about disposing of a weapon, but he's not about to argue with an angry shark.

Jason rushes in with zipties. "I got it from here," he tells the shark. Its backpack helpfully has JEFF'S BAG scrawled across it in purple marker, so it doesn't take much to connect the dots. "Thanks for the assist, Jeff."

"Mrrr!" it says, beaming at Jason. Definitely a Jeff.

He makes quick work of securing Kite Man, tying him to the nearest lamppost for the cops to find. The septapus uses this opportunity to unwrap itself and hop off of Jason's shoulder.

Jason's grown more attached to his tentacle buddy than he'd initially have expected. His eyes track it as it jumps into Jeff's arms with a loud "MEEP!" and a seven-armed hug.

Two small, adorable mutant creatures hugging it out on a Bowery sidewalk does chart on Gotham's weirdness list, Jason admits. Jeff says something that makes the septapus flail its arms, then hop back down to the ground. If Jason's reading the body language right, it looks like Jeff is interrogating his friend.

"Meep," the septapus says emphatically.

Jeff crosses his arms. His expression's gone from relieved to resigned. He points at Kite Man's unconscious body.

"Eep……"

Before Jason's very eyes, he watches the septapus stretch its spiky bottom open. Does it have two mouths? Actually, he'd rather not ponder that. It shifts, and suddenly a whole bunch of objects bounce out onto the ground. He would have bet (and subsequently lost) so much money on how much this tiny septapus could store inside itself, because holy shit. Coins, a lightbulb, two takeout containers, what looks suspiciously like a Bat-catalytic converter… There's no way to explain the heap of arbitrary treasures unless it traded its eighth arm for a pocket dimension.

So much stuff, yet no altimeter.

Jeff motions for his friend to keep going.

A couple more tchotchkes and Robin the Elder's Batmobile keyring tumble out of the pocket void. Followed by a bright green gauge that bounces to a stop near Kite Man's knee.

Jason retracts his previous statement.

Apparently satisfied, Jeff plops down so his friend has easy access to the fishtank on his back. The angle lets Jason read the piece of paper taped to it, because of course the septapus has a nametag too. Right there in crayon, complete with doodled illustrations, KEN is written in bold letters.

Ken climbs into his tank and settles in for whatever trek's in store for him and Jeff. They wave at Jason before heading off, and he waves back with both a hand and a tentacle.

Look at him getting all sappy.

Jason watches Jeff and Ken until they turn the corner out of view. Huh. He'd been so wrapped up in this strange little adventure that he didn't get his normal stewing in. Whodathunk that'd leave him in better spirits than most new moon nights do. Even the prospect of hearing back from his dream school feels less nerve-wracking than it did earlier. If Ken could put his faith in Jason, Jason can put his faith in himself.

He takes a first step to turn and leave, only for his boot to land on the catalytic converter and send him careening. "Goddamnit, Ken," he grumbles, his back flat against the ground, but he laughs despite himself.

It's hard out here for a vigilante tentacle monster, but sometimes it's alright.