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Oh fuck yeah. Let's do this.
He grabs the little bottle of grease he keeps in his inside pocket, smears it over his domino mask to make it more black than dark red, then shrugs his jacket off, placing the rebreather mask on top in a neat little pile. Hood wouldn't be doing this, so he's gotta do something to obfuscate.
Dick stares at him, says, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Oh ho ho, he's not paying attention. More fool him.
He ducks low, rolls, and springs up right in Dick's face. Dick lurches back, yelps “Jay?”
Jason smacks his nose, open handed, like he's honking a horn -or how he would honk a horn if he ever drove a car- says, “Tag, you're it!” and sprints away.
He's at the edge of the roof before he hears Dickie yell “You little shit!” as he comes pelting after him.
Jason cackles as he dives off the edge.
He's gotta find Steph -he’s pretty sure she's the closest- before he gets caught. (Dick can't tag him back anyway, but he doesn't think that matters.) If he can toss her at Dick, she'll get tagged, not him.
Admittedly, he'll then have her after him too, for pulling that stunt, but…well, what's a game without everyone playing?
*****
Ahahaha shit, Dick's fast.
He whips round a corner, pants into his comm, “O, Spoiler's location?”
There's the sound of a keyboard, then “Two blocks east. Why-?” Thank god, that's close, he was right.
Also, he's going way too fast for this to be safe, but Dick's right on his heels, he can't slow down.
He spots a flash of purple, and hurtles towards it.
He's so close now-.
He tucks and rolls, dodging Dick's outstretched hand, and hears him collide with Steph.
Nailed it!
She screeches “What the fuck!”
He takes a breath to turn and look.
Dick's crouched on top of Steph, looking right at him as he lowers his hand to gentle bop her nose and tell her “You're it.”
She scrambles put from under him and hisses, “Are you playing tag?”
Dick doesn't break eye contact, as he says, “Yes.”
She turns to look at him too.
Oh shit. He's really in trouble now. They're gonna team up against him.
He grins at them, teeth bared, and flips backwards off the roof: they've gotta catch him first!
*****
Ohshitohshitohshitohshit! He slaps the ground as he tumbles to disperse momentum.
The gremlin sprang off when he started rolling to avoid getting squashed, but he's back on top of him as soon as it was safe.
Oof. The brat’s growing up. Having him perched on top of his chest is not comfortable. Jason wheezes theatrically.
Damian prods his cheek, on the scar there, and says, “Tag, you're it.”
Fuck, but he'd been got good and proper. He sees why they tagged him in, Jason wasn't expecting Damian to be it.
He drops his head back, and tries to let his heart rate settle.
He grins up at the sky, up at the kid.
He'll get up in a minute, he just needs to take a breather. He can't tag-back, so it makes no difference.
Besides, if he lies here for long enough, maybe someone will come to check on him, and he can tag them without having to go haring across half the city, again.
*****
He'd managed to shake Damian a few minutes ago, and he's holed up behind a vent.
He taps his comm on, whispers, “Hey, O.”
“Red.”
“Wanna help me get Batwoman?” There's not much choice: he can't tag Damian back, Dick and Steph have clearly teamed up - with Damian, so probably with the others too, he wouldn't be able to tag Cass anyway, and he doesn't know the others well enough to do something like this.
Well, he doesn't really know Kate either, but she'd said she'd like to see him, so…
There's a longer pause than he'd like before, “Sure.”
Hmm. He's dubious.
“She's on the other side of the city though.”
Oh. Aww maaaaaan.
Oh well. He'd better get going, then.
*****
Now, he doesn't actually want to get shot, so-. He thumbs his comm on, chirps, “Hey Auntie!”
He watches her slap her comm on, “Jason?”
“Wanna play tag?”
She mouths ‘What?’, but says, “Alright. Who's it?”
He circles around until he's behind her, then he slides up close, tucks his arms through hers, over her shoulders, and rolls them both backwards.
She ends up flat on her face, but unhurt, and he gently taps the back of her head and says, “You are!”
And now she has a rough idea of the physical parameters of the game. Tackling is absolutely allowed.
He has no doubt that the next time they play -or even this time, if she's unlucky, or he is- she will be tackling him.
She gets back up, says, “You better start running.”
He spreads his arms, “Can't tag me back.”
She narrows her eyes.
He offers, “I can lead you to the others, though.”
If he does it right, they won't realise that Kate is it, not him, so her odds will be better if she agrees, and she knows that.
“Alright. Let's do this.” She holds her hand out.
He shakes it firmly.
*****
“Betrayal! Heinous betrayal!”
She'd tagged Dick, then immediately teamed up with him instead of Jason.
Oh man, he's so screwed.
Maybe tagging, and getting everyone else tagged, as aggressively as he had was not the best idea.
There's not a great deal he can do about it now though.
If he makes it a bit further -maybe halfway across the roof?- he should be able to get a bit of a lead on them. There's a shortcut a few blocks away if he goes actually through one of the buildings, and he doubts they know about it.
He takes another step, sliding carefully backwards as subtly as he can.
And Kate loses patience, and tries to tackle him.
He dodges-. Straight into Dick.
Jason can't help the yelp of surprise as Dick wrestles him flat. He's bigger than Dick, it shouldn't be so easy for him to do this. Well, Dick goes up against supervillains, and they don't go down easy.
He tries to buck Dick off and wriggle away, but Dick just presses him down harder, before spidering his hand up Jason's chest -Jason can't help laughing at how ridiculous it feels- and covering Jason's face with his hand before finally saying “Tag, you're it.”
Jason licks his hand - he can't go anywhere to tag anyone else with Dick still pinning him. Dick squawks in disgust, but doesn't let him go.
Kate grins smugly at him, “See ya!”
He warns her “I'm gonna getcha!”
She just salutes with two fingers, and grapples away.
He's gonna. If he can convince Dick to team up with him this time.
“Hey Dickie.”
“Yeah, Jay?”
“Wanna team up against the others?”
Dick smirks down at him. “Let's do it.”
Aw yiss. Let their enemies beware!