Fanfic / A Ninja's Guide to Gotham

Man, you know what would be great? Getting lost in a skyscraper-laden industrial hellscape.

Kei had never had that thought. Not even ironically. Thinking that way seemed like asking for trouble, especially whenever she stared down the actual circumstances of her life thus far.

Or: Welcome to Gotham City.

—Official summary on Archive of Our Own

A crossover story between the Naruto fanfic Catch Your Breath and Batman, set specifically during Batman: Under the Red Hood.

While home on leave from high-intensity missions, Kei makes plans to train with her brother Hayate. Before they can meet up, both of them are stolen from Konoha and magically dumped in Gotham by forces unknown. While Kei struggles to survive in the city, facing challenges within and without, Hayate picks up a formidable new guardian: The up-and-coming Red Hood. Hopefully, they can figure out a way to balance all the competing interests and still get home.

AO3 link and Fanfiction Dot Net link.

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A Ninja's Guide to Gotham contains examples of:

• Adaptational Villainy: In the film, Ra's al Ghul serves only as Mr. Exposition about Jason's revival and subsequent rampage. In this story, Konoha shinobi observing Gotham theorize as early as chapter 5 that Ra's al Ghul is one of the driving forces behind Kei and Hayate's inter-world kidnapping, even if they don't know his name or his motives. His assassins stalk Kei across Gotham and repeatedly drive her out of hiding places, even using firebombs, and are the only people on the Gotham side of the story who are aware of her possession status without being told.
• Alien Blood: Even when disguised as ordinary humans, Zetsu clones don't so much bleed as ooze when injured, and the substance is an off-white goo more than a liquid. Anyone who fights them at close range ends up covered in it. It's one of the giveaways that holds true even when the Zetsu's transformation is otherwise flawless.
• An Arm and a Leg: An accepted way to deal with Zetsu clones if one doesn't have the time to immediately kill them. Hayate cuts the arm off a Zetsu clone in chapter 18 offscreen, only to throw it out the window after the owner once Kei defenestrates it, and Kei tears dozens of them to shreds in the subsequent fight.
• Anger Born of Worry: The first time Jason catches Hayate following him during a job, he starts shouting at him and orders him out of the building. Hayate is unfazed by the scolding and finally forces Jason to realize that, if he can't actually rely on Hayate to keep himself safe in the apartment, then Jason needs to supervise him directly.
  • Also this moment, after realizing that Obito, Kakashi, and Rin have gone AWOL to help their friends:
    Jiraiya: “They’re not alone out there. Sure, maybe the particular lineup for this mission is…unideal—”
    Minato: (growling) “All three of them are benched for the next month for this stunt. If I could knock them all down a rank—”
    Jiraiya: (interrupting right back) “Which you can’t.”
    Minato: “Sensei.”
• Animal Eye Spy: Aburame clan members can't do this normally, but Shimika manages to look through all the eyes of the kikai insects sent to infiltrate the League of Assassins. It took a lot of time to develop the ability, even with multiple fūinjutsu masters, and it causes a Power-Strain Blackout within minutes.
• Animal Motifs: Kei is repeatedly compared to a shy turtle in other characters' points of view, even if that person doesn't know about her connection to Isobu. This doesn't even get into the vigilante Badass Family that is the Bat-Clan, who are almost all themed after bats or birds.
• Assassin Outclassin':
  • The League of Assassins, as it turns out, has a somewhat spotty record against the Batfamily, never mind superpowered magic ninjas from another world. Kei, as a Person of Mass Destruction, is only inconvenienced by League operatives because she wants to observe Batman's Thou Shalt Not Kill rule while in Gotham. The main threat posed by the assassins is less of a chance that she'd lose to them in a fight and more the idea that their Tranquillizer Dart weapons might contain something dangerous enough to drive her berserk in a populated area.
  • After being informed that the League of Assassins might be after Hayate, Jason's narration notes that he's been dealing with stray assassins by dropping them headfirst off buildings. Similarly, out-of-town assassins hired by Black Mask fail to take him down.
  • Hayate is more than capable of fighting off League assassins even three-on-one. It's later clarified that he never attacks them head-on, preferring instead to get the jump on them with an Attack Hello. When Zetsu clones come after him and Kei, he's even more vicious and aims outright to kill the attackers.
• Barrier-Busting Blow: Turns out the interior doors and walls of the average Gotham apartment building aren't strong enough to stop a determined attack from Zetsu clones. It doesn't turn out well for them, since Hayate cuts the intruding arm off and Kei hurls the interloper out the window.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The main reason why Hayate sticks around Jason even after recovering from being shot. While he genuinely doesn't have anywhere else to go for help, Hayate is grateful for Jason's gruff approach to caring for him like a normal kid and can tell that the feeling is mutual. It helps that, as Hayate becomes more familiar with Crime Alley, he's able to see the good Red Hood does with his own eyes. He becomes increasingly quick to defend "Aniki's" choices afterward.
  • Having been kind to Hayate also earns Jason gratitude from Kei, despite their rocky acquaintance otherwise. As Obito points out, even though Kei knows about the crime lord scheme and finds Jason irritating, she still trusts him to treat Hayate well.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • This trope is where most of Dick's turmoil springs from in this story. Bringing up Jason's death in Dick's presence always drags grief and regret to the surface, and part of the way he copes is by stepping up for Tim. When he believes Tim’s been killed in front of him, the first emotion to claw its way past shock is protective rage.
  • Kei’s drive to protect Hayate has made her more moody and desperate the longer she’s separated from him. Seeing as Kei is a jinchūriki, her long fuse is attached to a much larger bomb than most people’s. Whenever the possibility of Hayate being harmed is brought up, other characters are bluntly informed that Kei might become extremely violent in response to such a scenario. At one point, Kei admits to herself that she can't relate to Nightwing because when the Joker killed the second Robin, the Bats let him live.
  • In Jason's case, his Would Not Hurt A Child policy is invoked upon his and Hayate’s first meeting, which results in Red Hood taking an injured young ninja under his wing. Even before they know each other's names, Jason fights and kills twenty other gangsters in response to a kid being shot on his watch. After, Jason devotes a lot of time to looking after his new roommate's health, spending their downtime together, and keeping Hayate safe from the consequences of taking over Gotham's drug trade.
    • In return, Hayate thinks they’re both overprotective. Even so, he does call them “Oneesan” and “Aniki” in response, showing that he appreciates them despite this.
• Big Damn Reunion: Kei and Hayate finally see each other again in chapter 12, after finishing off the Fearsome Hand of Four, and they bear hug each other immediately. Because it's from Kei's point of view, all other participants in the scene vanish by comparison to the emotional moment.
  • Downplayed in chapter 19, because although Team Minato reassembles thanks to Obito's Kamui, the fact that the scene is from Dick's POV and that they're arriving in the middle of an ongoing fight means no one has time for hugs and congratulations.
• Body Horror: Once the Zetsu disguises start failing, there's a lot of this going around. Including Body of Bodies fusions, imperfect regeneration problems, and more.
• Can't Default to Murder: Unsurprisingly for a shinobi of her era and power level, Kei has a body count and isn't especially concerned about adding to it while on missions. While in Gotham, however, Kei does her best to avoid killing anyone directly, because she realizes that leaving a trail of bodies around the city would draw undue attention and probably get her on Batman's bad side. This doesn't stop the League of Assassins and her allies in Konoha from racking up kill-counts behind her back, for different reasons.
• Child Soldiers: Discussed and pulled apart by various characters’ stances on the topic.
  • Kei (16) and Hayate (14) are both this, being a special jōnin and a chūnin respectively. Of the two of them, Hayate is much more upbeat about it, because he has no other frame of reference.
  • Jason hates this concept down to his bones, thinking of the entire teen vigilante lifestyle as what got him killed in the first place. And on top of that, everyone he knew seemed to just carry on without learning anything from his death.
  • The Bats in general are deeply disturbed by the implications of a couple of teenagers being multi-year war veterans, and Tim's research indicates that even in their world's version of pre-modern Japan, the age of majority was never lower than fifteen.
• Concealment Equals Cover: Subverted for a League assassin, cornered in a spare room by the Red Hood. With the advanced HUD in Jason's helmet and his intuition, Jason easily shoots through the wall and hits the man in the leg to subdue him.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror:
  • Due to being raised in the Crapsaccharine World that is the Naruto setting, Hayate is very used to seeing violence and easily rationalizes most of what Jason does to take over Gotham's criminal underground. After all, where he's from, children are raised to be disciplined, magical mercenaries from an early age, and hired out to anybody with enough money. Jason is stunned by what information Hayate offers about his life thus far, and is sure that the society he came from is a League of Assassins-tier abomination. Every time Hayate easily accepts Jason’s violent tactics, it just makes him more and more uncomfortable.
  • By contrast, Kei is not this, and is in fact very aware that even Gotham is by most metrics a better place to live than the shinobi-run nations tend to be. While Jason prepared a diatribe to call out the horrors of Hayate's upbringing, he wasn't prepared for Kei to agree with his criticisms.
• Coup de Grâce: Though Kei leaves defeated League assassins alive once they're down and restrained, Jiraiya orders Shimika to kill them via the chakra-eating butterflies after Kei leaves the building.
• Crapsaccharine World: The broader DCU and the Naruto setting are both this, but in different flavors. While one has the occasional alien invasion that threatens to drive humanity extinct or rewrite reality (along with endemic supervillain threats like the Joker), the other has the veneer of respectable circa-1980s Japanese culture plastered over a barely-not-feudal society with superpowers. The second the Konoha shinobi start interacting with the locals in Gotham in any substantial way, that cheery facade peels like wallpaper, exposing the ugliness.
• Culture Clash:
  • Most commonly exemplified by the conversations between Jason and Hayate in the former’s apartment. Konoha is very different from Gotham.
  • Tim and Hayate’s first interaction is almost entirely at cross-purposes. While Hayate is content with the changes Jason has made to Crime Alley and doesn’t mind the violent enforcement incidents (including decapitation) because he’s from a world that encourages it, Tim is worried that Red Hood is inducting kids into his gang as he expands his influence.
  • Kei is very aware that leaving a trail of bodies in Gotham is a bad idea, even if her commanding officers would view any deaths as self-defense given her circumstances. As a result, she spends most of her time avoiding conflict anywhere she can to remove the chance of something going wrong. Hayate is…not so careful, because he is immediately dropped into a fight and doesn’t know anything about Gotham.
  • In a much less dramatic example, Kei and Tim briefly discuss preferred pronouns and the author points out in a note that Kei transmigrated before gay marriage was even legal in the US.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Jason's first appearance shows exactly how outgunned the standard Gotham goon is in a fight with the Red Hood, taking out more than twenty armed opponents within ten minutes. He also serves as a brick wall for the League of Assassins' operations in his territory, killing their agents for incursions.
  • Every time Kei runs into the League of Assassins, one of these ensues. She refuses to kill them, despite their persistence, because leaving a trail of bodies in Gotham is an excellent way to get on society's bad side. Her issue is their tracking skills, which means she has no time to rest between attacks unless she can find a way to lose them. It takes until she cuts a deal with Red Hood and then the Bats before she can effectively find a place to hide.
  • Hayate describes his own encounters with the League of Assassins like this as well. Later, it's revealed that he attacks from under an invisibility genjutsu and shocks them unconscious.
• Decapitation Presentation: Offscreen, Jason tracks down the lieutenants of the biggest drug-running operations in Gotham, kills all of them, and tosses a duffel bag full of their severed heads onto the table at the next big meeting to establish dominance. Other characters mention hearing about it and wonder what kind of person would go that far.
• Deducing the Secret Identity: There are a number of details that connect Kei and Hayate’s Secret Identities, mostly because they don’t work very hard to hide them. Hayate doesn’t even know that masked identities are a thing until Jason explains.
  • Jason notes that “Spike” wears the same kind of kunai holster that Hayate does, and asks about it. Hayate immediately identifies the other ninja as Kei once Jason starts elaborating on their encounter.
  • Tim also notices that “Genbu” and “Suzaku” share equipment loadouts, down to the katana each of them wear on their hips. Which is a problem, because kunai also leave distinct wounds and indicates one of them killed two people. He's also the first to realize that Kei knows more about the Red Hood situation than she's been letting on.
• Destination Defenestration: Once provoked by a group of Zetsu, Kei kicks two of them out of the high-rise apartment window. Because Zetsu are more durable than humans, even launching them with enough force to hit the opposite building doesn't deter them for long.
• Devoured by the Horde: A common fate of those caught amid a Zetsu clone swarm. Kei and Hayate abandon their captive League ninja in order to retreat, and Hayate offhandedly notes in his narration that he doesn't know if the Zetsu clones killed the man first.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Despite being far outside the weight class of anybody else in Gotham, Kei has little interest in actually fighting. She instead tries to escape the attention of the League of Assassins, and even when cornered, she yells at them to go away before subduing them and then running again. When given a reason to about-face and turn an appreciable fraction of her power on her opponents, she immediately beats them into the ground. Or worse.
• Double Tap: Shinobi have to resort to this when dealing with Zetsu clones once they reveal themselves and attack en masse. Otherwise, as Dick finds out, they have a nasty tendency to regenerate and keep up the fight. Hayate and Kei take a vicious satisfaction in finishing off these opponents because Swirly Zetsu killed their mother two years ago.
• Dramatic Irony: Every single one of the POV characters is missing some vital information that would otherwise change their decisions. Much entertainment is had from watching them stumble toward or away from the correct conclusions.
  • Kei has no idea that Hayate landed in close proximity to a gang fight and was subsequently picked up by Jason. He's been living in Crime Alley since then, which is one of the areas Kei hasn't searched thoroughly because of Red Hood's presence.
  • Hayate doesn't have the sensor range to be able to find Kei in such a large city without her going out of her way to enter a Tailed Beast transformation, and lacks the personal history and cultural context to make fully informed decisions about how he behaves in Gotham. But he is aware of the gaps in his knowledge. As a result, he tends to stay mostly in Crime Alley, which is one part of the city that Kei actively avoids. And due to everyone's reluctance to share information, Hayate doesn't know the details of Red Hood's relationship with the Bat-Clan.
  • Jason doesn't know that Kei and Hayate are related when he meets each of them, or that they're looking for each other. He also doesn't realize that Hayate has been noticed by the local vigilante population under the name "Suzaku," or that Hayate is The Empath and reading his emotions all the time.
  • Tim and Dick don't know that Kei's whole purpose to find Hayate and stay out of trouble, primarily because she refuses to tell them anything directly. They also assume that "Suzaku" is part of Red Hood's gang, as opposed to being just a kid Trapped in Another World that Jason is trying to look after on the side.
  • Back home in Konoha, none of the shinobi realize that they're not supposed to be killing people in Gotham until Kei writes a note that they can read through the crystal ball. They also don't know that there's any preexisting relationship between the Bats and the League of Assassins that might complicate their interactions, or much of anything about Gotham's culture.
• Dynamic Entry: Used a couple of different times.
  • Hayate sneaks up on and lays into the three assassins cornering Spoiler, defeating them inside of twenty seconds.
  • Kei's Ground-Shattering Landing doubles as her first attack in the fight with the Fearsome Hand of Four, smashing the biggest member of the quartet into a crater on impact. The fight doesn't last very long after that.
  • Jason combines this with There Was a Door to get the jump on a League assassin, shooting the man in the leg with the help of the thermal imaging camera in his helmet. While the man is in agony on the floor, Jason idly opens the door and drags him out by his ankle.
• Elite Mook: The Fearsome Hand of Four serve as this, putting Red Hood and Batman on the back foot unlike all of their other opponents thus far. This does not save them when Kei arrives, taking down the two remaining members of the group in seconds.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Kei is aware she could get funding by overpowering almost anyone and just taking their stuff, she decides against going after people who are treated as Beneath Notice by the authorities. Instead, she comes up with her Mugging the Monster scheme below.
  • Jason, as Red Hood, is running a "moral" drug empire by imposing restrictions against selling to children and limiting violence against civilians in his territory. Hayate sees evidence of this in the formation of an informal neighborhood watch, signified by subtle red accessories on citizens allied with Red Hood, and notes that sex workers in the area are actively protected. His policies are, unsurprisingly, enforced at gunpoint.
  • Nobody likes the Joker. At all.
• Extra-Dimensional Shortcut: Obito's access to Kamui allows him to do this, forming portals with his body as a medium. One of the more frustrating parts of the Weirdness Search and Rescue troubleshooting (see below) was that Obito couldn't immediately solve the problem with this method. After arriving in Gotham, he admits to Kei and his team that the arrays that allowed him to stretch his technique far enough to reach the city are broken, which means they're now all trapped together.
• Feel No Pain: As Dick discovers, Zetsu clones aren't deterred by nonlethal strikes because they can barely feel them and don't have the same kind of nervous system as humans do. The only thing that keeps them down is sufficient damage to center mass or their heads. Even fully-powered strikes from his escrima sticks don't keep them down for long.
  • In a funnier example, Obito admits that he once cut a finger off his Zetsu arm because of this, but it grew back.
• Fighting Fingerprint: Unbeknownst to either Batman or Red Hood, Hayate realizes they've trained together just by watching the way they fight against the Fearsome Hand of Four.
  • Obito, a Mangekyō Sharingan user, can spot a similar pattern due to being present when Konoha spies on Gotham using a crystal ball and observing the Bats in action. After a second of thinking about it, he also ties Red Hood to the same Master-Apprentice Chain as Nightwing and Batman based on their acrobatic movements.
• Fish out of Water: Hayate, who was raised entirely in Konoha and doesn’t know how guns, cars, or digital technology work. Luckily, he runs into Jason in the first ten minutes and gets the help he needs.
• Foil: All over the place.
  • Kei and Hayate’s circumstances are constantly contrasted. While Kei landed in Gotham with some idea of how to survive in a modern city, she’s beset by circumstantial difficulties and the League of Assassins. Hayate, meanwhile, was immediately scooped up by an up-and-coming mob boss who Would Not Hurt A Child and is on vacation by comparison. While Hayate basically adopted Jason as a surrogate big brother and guardian, which Jason reciprocates, Kei doesn't consider herself close to any of the Bats and the mistrust there is very much mutual.
  • Hayate and Tim are respectively a Ninja Brat and a Teen Genius vigilante, and they have very different moral standards despite being nearly the same age. Tim is appalled by Red Hood’s rise to power, while Hayate approves of or at least accepts Jason's methods. Later on, Hayate points out to Obito that he's spoken to Tim maybe twice and doesn't consider them friends, while Tim spent most of the earlier chapters worrying about Hayate's safety (under the assumption he's an innocent kid caught up in events).
  • Kei and Jason are both dangerous teenage fighters who are willing to resort to lethal force, and their protective instincts are focused on the same kid. Kei is a Person of Mass Destruction, but she chooses to fight without killing in Gotham to keep a lower profile. Jason, meanwhile, is a Badass Normal putting together enough resources to become a crime lord to rival Black Mask and doesn’t especially care how many bodies are left in his wake. Both of them also have contrasting relationships with the League of Assassins, with Kei as a target and Jason having been trained by them. Also, while Jason has no way of knowing this, Kei (probably) also died and woke up in a world she recognized, but was reborn as a baby and has no way of connecting to her old life, so she gave up on it entirely. Jason, by contrast, is constantly haunted by his death and revival experiences.
  • Jason realizes this about himself and Obito. While Jason actually did die and was resurrected later, Obito was presumed dead for half a year after Kannabi. While Jason's death and revival was a traumatic experience in basically every way and he's still defined by his resentment of everyone involved, Obito appears unaffected by his trials. And unlike the Bat-clan, who refuse to take revenge for Jason, Obito's attackers "probably didn't last five minutes." Jason is disgusted with himself for being envious at how well Obito bounced back, because he knows all of it is a product of the terrible world Team Minato come from.
• The Four Gods:
  • Kei picks the mask name Genbu as an inside joke, because she’s wearing mostly black clothes and an ANBU mask designed to look like Isobu’s face. It sticks.
  • Hayate accidentally chooses the rogue identity Suzaku as an on-the-spot option while talking to Robin, unaware of his sister’s decision. It serves as one of many connecting elements between them.
  • Later on, Seiryū and Byakko are taken by Obito and Kakashi, respectively, but this time it's done intentionally to keep up the trend. Rin chooses the name Kirin, which also follows this pattern. These three are notably more casual about their use of codenames.
• Fuzz Therapy: Invoked by Kakashi, who realizes Kei's been pushed close to her emotional breaking point in Gotham. He summons Pakkun to give her an emotional support animal in her time of need and an convenient excuse to check out of the ongoing conversation.
• The Glomp: When Kei and Hayate finally meet again in person, Hayate executes a flying tackle-hug that Kei has to work to turn into a standard bear hug.
• Helpless Window Death: Trapped behind one of Kei's barriers, Dick has a heart-stopping moment when he sees Tim (actually a Zetsu clone) run through by Kakashi's Chidori. Understandably, once Dick figures out what happened by seeing the Alien Blood, he's not happy about the scare.
• Heroic Neutral: Kei does not want to get involved with any of Gotham's drama, feeling that it's just inviting headaches she doesn't need. While unwilling to attack Gotham's protectors, she states outright that the only thing she cares about is Hayate's safety. Even when providing information to various Bats about Red Hood, she doesn't tell them his actual identity and lets them figure out what's going on through investigation and DNA analysis. However, Kei also feels she owes Jason a debt for protecting Hayate when she couldn't, and tells him that he can ask her for a favor in return.
• Hydro-Electro Combo: Kei and Hayate's primary nature transformations form this dynamic. They finally use their powers collaboratively in chapter 19 to nonlethally stun a group of attackers.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All chapter titles are phrased as pieces of advice for a visitor to Gotham to follow.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Kakashi does this to a Zetsu clone impersonating Tim, to the point where his hand punches all the way through the fake's torso.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: While Zetsu clones are capable of mimicking any person they touch down to the details of their equipment (which is fully functional), they also copy the chakra signatures of their victims so closely that very few people can distinguish real from fake. However, in a city where all but two humans do not have chakra, this makes them stand out once they go on the attack.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Chapter 6: After almost three weeks of silence on the topic, Hayate explains what a jinchūriki is to Jason.
  • Chapter 10: Kei finds out that Hayate, as Suzaku, is a known associate of Red Hood.
  • Chapter 11: With encouragement from Stephanie, Kei finally explains the situation with her brother and her jinchūriki status to them, clarifies the threat represented by the League of Assassins, and helps Tim and Steph figure out some of the magical strangeness happening in Gotham. Kei also admits that she and Hayate are Trapped in Another World and just want to go home.
  • Chapter 12: Hayate finds out that Kei's bilingual right at the end of the chapter, which is tied to an S-rank classified secret; namely, that Kei is a transmigrator.
  • Chapter 14: After some pressure from Kei, Hayate transforms into an undisguised Red Hood, and Dick's reaction shows that he instantly recognizes his dead brother's face.
  • Chapter 15: By watching the footage from the previous chapter and testing blood leftover from the fight with the Fearsome Hand of Four, the Batfamily confirm that the mysterious Red Hood is actually the resurrected Jason Todd.
  • Chapter 18: Kei and Hayate finally learn that Konoha is capable of delivering packages to their apartment through space-time manipulation, and that the League of Assassins has Zetsu clones among their ranks.
  • Chapter 21: Jason finally reveals his name to Hayate, and starts to explain the story of how he died.
  • Chapter 23: Kei explains to Kakashi, Dick, and Bruce that she has uncanny knowledge of Gotham...in such a way that it seems linked to her Supernatural Sensitivity and chronic childhood nightmares. While Kei does know the broad strokes of the Gotham story and most of the Naruto plotline, and she relies heavily on her ability to sense chakra under normal circumstances, both of those and her nightmares are all linked through her transmigrator status.
  • Chapter 25: Obito lets Kei, Hayate, and Jason know he picked up English from the League ninja he killed, and Kei tells Tim about Damian's existence as soon as she works it out as the most likely option.
• It Seemed Trivial:
  • While Hayate is aware that Jason has seriously conflicted feelings about the Batfamily thanks to his status as The Empath, he isn’t able to pry the reason out of him at first. As a result, Hayate accidentally explains a fair bit about Red Hood’s personality and policy to Tim, after catching him attempting a preliminary investigation into Crime Alley.
  • Initially, Gotham's heroes are pretty unsure of whether Genbu (Kei) and Suzaku (Hayate) are related rogues, and so they don't mention them to each other. This goes out the window when Tim runs their DNA through the Batcomputer and finds out that they're siblings.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Jason is this. While often abrasive and even cruel when dealing with other criminals or the various Gotham vigilantes, he genuinely looks out for Hayate and teaches him about Gotham in an effort to keep him safe. They even have movie nights. And though the concept of kid crimefighters like Robin and Spoiler infuriates him, Jason never actually raises a hand to any of the underage Bats.
• Killing Intent: Despite being Badass Normals, the Bats are fairly sensitive to this, which lets them easily detect when Kei is feeling combative or when Isobu is acting up before the shouting starts. Obito's is also intense when he's "interrogating" a League assassin, but doesn't set off the same instinctual dread.
• Language Barrier:
  • Hayate only speaks Japanese with some loanwords thrown in, limiting the number of characters he can easily interact with. Luckily, Jason’s a Bat-trained vigilante, and that includes a long list of foreign languages. Hayate later works around this problem through technology when meeting Robin and Spoiler, though he does accidentally fry the former's gauntlet computer after their first encounter.
  • Kei is fully bilingual with a strong accent, so she doesn't have to deal with this. Other characters do note the gap between her vocabulary and her accent, though, and it ends up being yet another tally mark in the "weird" column. Kei admits to Isobu that she has something of a tin ear for languages outside of those two, though, and has to get translation help when dealing with the League of Assassins in their earlier encounters.
  • It's noted that when watching the footage of Dick interviewing Hayate and Kei, Bruce has to correct the auto-generated subtitles for the sake of the official record. While Bruce, Dick, and Jason are fluent in Japanese, Tim (whose only non-European language is Cantonese) and Steph are not. Tim does make an effort to learn the basics, though, and Steph usually has her phone handy for translations.
  • Obito, thanks to ripping the knowledge out of a League assassin's brain (and killing the man in the process), can understand English by the start of chapter 24. He gives no indication of this new skill to the other characters, but listens to everything they say.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Under a tremendous amount of stress and with her mental health in the red, Kei falls back to regarding Hayate as this. When pressed, she even admits it to Jason while Hiding Behind the Language Barrier, since Hayate is in the same room. Obito later uses this fact—and Kei's willingness to let Hayate to seek Jason out as a safe refuge while she heads into battle—to convince Jason that Kei actually does trust him with the most important person in her life.
  Obito: “Kei left her heart in your hands twice and you still think she doesn’t trust you to do the right thing? What the hell. You sure you have eyes under there?”
  Jason: “Excuse you—”
  Obito: “And even if she didn’t, Hayate is the best judge of character I’ve ever met. If he says you’re good, he’s right.”
  Jason: (dawning realization) “Wait. Her heart—?”
  Obito: “Hayate. Her whole reason for living, some days. Anyone who knows her knows that. Don’t pretend that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters more to Kei than her brother.”
• Locked Out of the Loop: Multiple characters are keeping secrets that can cause trouble down the line, or would have cut much of their problems short.
  • Kei doesn’t trust anyone in Gotham, so she avoids giving Batman, Nightwing, or Robin much information about who she is or what her motivations are. She only seeks them out when Red Hood specifically pays her to and when she’s already worn down by being constantly pursued by Ra’s Al Ghul’s assassins. Kei also knows who the mysterious Red Hood is from the start and has no intention of revealing that information to the Bats (whose identities she also knows) directly. She only has the information because she’s a transmigrator, which she can’t explain.
  • Tim, after meeting both Kei and Hayate, works out quickly that they’re related. Unfortunately, he also learns that one or both of them murdered two gangsters a few weeks ago and knows the latter is basically working for the Red Hood. As a result, he avoids mentioning Hayate’s activities to Kei. Similarly, Dick, having met Kei at her cagiest, decides against mentioning “Suzaku” to her in case it stresses her out more. Not long afterward, Tim’s investigation reveals that Red Hood’s smallest lackey is her brother.
    • Kei finds out that the Bats knew about her brother in chapter 10, and narrowly retains control of her temper as one of her most important buttons is accidentally pressed.
  • Jason tries to hide his shadier dealings from Hayate, but quickly discovers that Hayate is both aware of how gangs work and can escape Jason’s security measures whenever he feels like it, which lets him roam Gotham at will. That said, he doesn’t know Jason’s real name, despite living in his apartment for the better part of a month.
• Lying by Omission: Since Kei is rather bad at direct lies, she prefers to engage in deception by telling partial truths or deliberately leaving part of the story unspoken. Most relevant to the Bats' interests, Kei talks her way around knowing the Red Hood's identity like this and it takes a little while for them to catch on.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Every Konoha ninja in the monitor room upon realizing that their investigation of the League of Assassins has uncovered a disguised White Zetsu.
• McNinja: Kei spitefully calls the League of Assassins this by name, frustrated with their constant pursuit.
• Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Hayate worries more that Jason is passively suicidal than about any of the criminal empire stuff. Jason's narration confirms that he has no plans that extend past his confrontation with the Joker and Batman, and thoughts about longer-term goals tend to get reflexively shut down.
• Missed Him by That Much: Kei and Hayate's arrival in Gotham separated them. Both of them repeatedly run into people who know about the opposite sibling, but for a long time aren't able to get information or connect enough dots to reunite.
• Mob War: Ongoing between Black Mask and Red Hood. Kei and Hayate both end up on the wrong end of gang-related shootouts on as early as their first night in Gotham, though only Hayate is injured as a result. As time progresses, Red Hood gains more and more ground and drives Black Mask so far into a corner that he resorts to breaking the Joker out of Arkham.
• Morality Pet: After realizing that he can’t allow an injured metahuman to disappear into Gotham's excuse for a social services system, Jason takes Hayate under his wing as this. He is extremely aware this choice is throwing a monkey wrench into his plans and his ability to execute them, and Hayate's actions are personally causing him a lot of stress, but refuses to go back on it.
• Moth Menace: The Gotham characters are understandably skeptical that an incursion of black-and-white butterflies could cause that much damage on their own. As Kei explains, however, they can be used to devour the Life Energy of a target or targeted area, and she soon learns that they performed a predatory Coup de Grâce on the assassins who initially survived the fight in chapter 10.
• Mugging the Monster: Invoked and exploited. Kei acquires funds by using Transformation Jutsu to disguise herself as an easy target in some of the worst neighborhoods in Gotham, then overpowers the would-be muggers and takes their cash. But, because of Technology Marches On, she’s unable to make use of any cards she finds, which is where the majority of most people’s money really is.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: As Steph puts it, Kei and Hayate are both "alien magic ninjas" and pretty thoroughly out of place even in Gotham.
• No Badass to His Valet: After an uncertain first meeting, Hayate doesn't fear Jason in the slightest. This despite knowing about the rise of the Red Hood's violence and notoriety in Gotham and being fully aware that he's a mob boss who can and does kill anyone who breaks his rules. Jason even tries to point this out to Hayate a few times, only to be met with a shrug. Instead, he worries that Jason is passively suicidal in the pursuit of his goals. Kei and her teammates, who also treat Red Hood casually, at least have the advantage of being many times more dangerous than he is.
• No One Gets Left Behind: A key component of how Konoha operates, when possible. The time Team Minato had to leave Obito behind nearly broke them. While it takes some time for their efforts to bear fruit, Konoha's upper administration is unrelenting in their efforts to get into contact with their missing shinobi again. Their first attempts are limited to sending the highly dangerous but disposable butterfly summons through to Gotham, but they refine their techniques constantly and are eventually able to send two scrolls filled with useful information and well-wishes to Kei and Hayate. It takes until chapter 20 to succeed, with Rin, Kakashi, and Obito having gone rogue to do it. Minato is completely exasperated when he discovers them gone, but Jiraiya points out that at least they're together.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Downplayed. While several of the Konoha shinobi in the story are well above the power curve in Gotham's Film Noir borders, this is not the case with the broader DC setting, and Kei knows it. Hayate and Rin in particular are still vulnerable to threats such as goons with handguns, because their particular shinobi skillsets don't involve increasing their durability.
• Off with His Head!:
  • Jason decapitates multiple drug dealers offscreen, with the details mostly obscured.
  • This is one of the few ways to immediately kill a Zetsu clone, because it's a holdover from when they were ordinary humans. Otherwise, their anatomy is more plantlike than human. Kei and Hayate immediately resort to this, while Dick takes a little longer to narrow down his options.
• One-Man Army:
  • Hayate notes that one of Jason’s tactics for rooting out rival criminal enterprises is “kick down the front door and shoot them all to death,” and his very first fight has him winning a twenty-on-one shootout without taking a hit on anything but his armor.
  • Kei is also this, it's a Deconstructed Trope. She gives the Bats a preview of her strength early on, on two occasions effortlessly dismantling opponents that the Badass Normals have more trouble subduing. Understandably, this makes them reluctant to rely on her in a city full of breakable people. And in chapter 19, she slaughters the Zetsu clones that square up against her and causes not-insignificant property damage in the process. While Kei can cause a lot of trouble for opponents she knows are up to no good, she can't always protect civilians caught in the crossfire and has to take precautions to avoid accidentally killing her allies when cutting loose. Her power also makes her a target for the League of Assassins, and they're not nearly as careful to avoid hurting bystanders.
• Painting the Medium: Isobu's speech is always written in bold, because he's an Animalistic Abomination often referred to as a "demon" by uneducated humans. When Kei taps into his power, intentionally or not, her voice also takes on this quality.
• Patchwork Fic: While the events of the story are clearly based on Batman: Under the Red Hood, some of the details pull more from the comics or have simply been changed.
  • Jason makes offhand references to having been "a zombie" before entering the Lazarus Pit and having killed a number of the criminal mentors Talia arranged for him, which are both canon only to Red Hood: The Lost Days. In the film, his revival via Lazarus Pit and subsequent disappearance from the League of Assassins invalidates both of those events.
    • In a much more minor example, Jason's use of a helmet with a voice modulator is pulled from Batman: Arkham Knight.
  • Tim Drake is the third and current Robin, while in the film, Jason's death in the field seems to have stopped Bruce from taking on any other sidekicks.
  • Stephanie Brown is active as Spoiler, when she was nonexistent in the film. In the comics, by the time of Jason's return to Gotham, she already held the Robin mantle and later "died" at the hands of Black Mask, disappearing from the comics until a Retcon took effect.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Kei, which is even more dangerous in a city with as many people as Gotham. The only person Hayate tells about this is Jason, who has Mob War to manage and a Resurrection Revenge plot to carry out. It takes until Kei hits her personal boiling point for her to actually explain this to the Bats. When she does actually fight, Kei either orders less-durable allies to leave the area or has to use barriers to limit the damage done, and only then can actually focus on her enemy.
• Poor Communication Kills: Almost every character is keeping secrets from the others. Usually on purpose, but sometimes they just don’t communicate well.
  • Kei accidentally makes both Tim and Dick think that she has it out for all other ninjas by being ominously cryptic. Fighting League assassins and occasional bursts of directionless Killing Intent don’t help her case. Kei also rigs pieces of Isobu-generated coral with his chakra, in an attempt to throw off the League of Assassins' tracking methods, which then almost gets Steph (and later Tim) killed when she picks one up in the middle of her patrol.
    • In an effort to avert this going forward, Stephanie and Tim visit Kei and hash out the major concerns of the situation in Gotham over a late-night snack.
  • Jason runs into and hires “Genbu” (Kei in a mask) to distract the Bats and is only told about an hour afterward that she’s Hayate’s missing sister, accidentally squandering the opportunity to reunite them.
  • Multiple characters (particularly Steph, Tim, and Jason) note that Kei has a bad habit of lying by omission as a strategy for avoiding conflict, which damages their ability to trust her. When Tim attempts to confront her about the holes in her story, he has a hard time believing what she says even when she's trying to tell him about Zetsu clones.
• Rage Breaking Point: After spending enough time in Gotham, Kei suspects the whole goal of the League of Assassins' harassment campaign is to push her until she snaps and kills someone, preferably in front of the Bats.
• Reckless Sidekick: Jason sees Hayate as an aspiring example, and it scares the hell out of him. He repeatedly remarks in his narration that he doesn't think Hayate has an ounce of sense and that he'll get hurt or killed at some point with all the sneaking around. In fact, this is a Subverted Trope because Hayate is a competent shinobi in his own right. His POV chapters reveal that he takes numerous precautions to avoid detection or conflict even within Red Hood's territory, and doesn't fight street crime like a vigilante would. He even gives up a chance to potentially reunite with his sister when he suspects the opportunity could turn into a trap he can't escape.
  • Jason eventually caves to Hayate's demands to follow him around, but only if he agrees to stay out of sight and avoid trouble. He figures that if Hayate's going to be running around Gotham regardless, it may as well happen while Jason is around to mitigate the risks. He seems entirely unaware that Bruce came to the exact same conclusion regarding the first Robin's nighttime forays into Gotham, as a part of Dick Grayson's origin story.
• Resurrection Revenge: A part of Jason's plot regarding the Joker. Hayate isn't aware of the details, but is afraid that he doesn't plan to survive the plan's completion no matter how it turns out. Kei, meanwhile, remembers enough of Red Hood's character to think that the whole thing is overly dramatic and going to fail.
• Retro Universe: While Gotham's technology is (mostly) on par with the present day, allowing for things like smartphones and ubiquitous internet usage by the characters, the Naruto universe is unquestionably this. While holding a VHS tape from Konoha that contains video evidence of the infiltration of the League of Assassins base, Kei has no choice but to sigh over the incompatible data formats.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: The League of Assassins has some method of constantly finding Kei that she theorizes is related to Isobu's chakra. Notably, they either can't find Hayate with the same efficiency or don't bother, and most of their agents who do end up in his proximity are dealt with by Red Hood.
  • Much later, Kakashi finds blood and ink on a League ninja uniform. With the help of the Bats' forensics kits, they all confirm that the enemy is tracking Kei through fūinjutsu.
• Secret Identity: Several, since Gotham’s one of the most famous superhero settings of all time. Besides the Batfamily, Kei chooses the vigilante moniker “Genbu” and Hayate (entirely coincidentally) chooses “Suzaku.” When the rest of Team Minato arrives, they are assigned codenames to fit the pattern, but are far more casual about consistently using them.
• Secret Identity Vocal Shift: It's noticed early on that Jason's Red Hood helmet includes some kind of vocal scrambler that makes his voice sound somewhere between a robot and Darth Vader.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Kei already knows the Batfamily’s identities due to being a transmigrator, but isn’t interested in sharing the information.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Hayate explains to Jason that he has absolutely no problem with human traffickers being killed, because Konoha’s policy is to execute them on the spot. Jason, who was trying to explain the reasons why he didn’t want Hayate following him at night, is mostly disturbed by his total nonchalance.
• Smoke Out:
  • Kei has a version of this in the form of the Hidden Mist ninjutsu, which doubles as a replacement for her usual sensing technique while in Gotham. It's also a tactic that's immediately recognizable to other shinobi who've seen her fight, like Hayate.
  • A tactic habitually employed by the Bats, mainly in the form of smoke bombs of various formulations. Jason uses one to break off from his conversation with Bruce after defeating the Fearsome Hand of Four, leaving Hayate behind with Kei.
• Socially Awkward Hero: As noted by Dick, Tim, Stephanie, and Jason, Kei is kind of a doormat in the day-to-day and prefers to avoid violence. But whenever she gets into a physical fight in front of them, it's always a Curb-Stomp Battle in her favor.
• Spared by the Adaptation: All members of the Fearsome Hand of Four survive the fight against Red Hood this time, mostly because they're all defeated before Jason has to resort to tasering the last man in the eye and shorting out his head-mounted laser cannon.
• Stealthy Mook: The League of Assassins is this, by the story's standards. As are the Zetsu clones that show up in their ranks, but more so due to their shape-shifting powers.
• Summon Magic:
  • Kei thinks that whatever brought her and Hayate to Gotham has to fall under this category, but hasn't been able to check. She also has the summon contract for Tsuruya, a huge crane, whom she employs to escort Hayate away from a pitched battle and toward safety.
  • In addition to being a Pest Controller in the traditional Aburame way, Shimika has a contract with a colony of chakra-eating butterflies that can be brought over to Gotham to help Konoha's investigative efforts.
  • Rin signs the summon contract for a clan of Scary Scorpions earlier than she did in the main timeline, and shows off one of them in Gotham.
• Superhuman Trafficking:
  • Brought up as a reason why Jason is determined to keep Hayate away from Gotham's social services. Metahumans are always at a greater risk of being taken advantage of, especially when there's so much mob money entangled with most of the power structures within the city. As a result, Hayate spends a month as Red Hood's roommate.
  • Hayate, meanwhile, is familiar with what the shinobi countries refer to as "bloodline theft," or the targeted kidnapping and exploitation of individuals with unusual kekkei genkai. Before Hayate was born, Kushina was targeted by Kumogakure for this reason, and upon Minato's ascension to the Hokage's seat, he made the practice a capital crime.
  • As Tim and Steph point out, technically Kei and Hayate are both victims of this because they aren't supposed to be in Gotham at all. Given the evidence at hand, Kei blames the League of Assassins and Ra's al Ghul in particular for their situation.
• Switching P.O.V.: Aside from Kei's usual focus, other POV characters include Hayate, Jason, Dick, Tim, Steph, Kakashi, and Obito.
• Taking the Bullet:
  • With an energy weapon instead of bullets, but Jason reflexively does this for Bruce during the fight against the Fearsome Hand of Four. His body armor turns out to be tough enough to let him survive, albeit a bit stunned. Tim notes afterward that because it's so hard to predict what effect an energy blast might have in a world like theirs, it's even riskier than just being shot by an actual bullet.
  • Knowing that Kei is being targeted deliberately, Tim shoves her out of the way of one of the League of Assassins' dart guns and accidentally takes the shot instead.
• Tastes Like Friendship:
  • Jason quickly takes this tack with Hayate, reasoning that he has to feed the kid. Later on, he notes that Hayate reciprocates by making him post-patrol meals and is a little exasperated that the kid keeps ruining his sleep schedule over it.
  • Kei attempts this with Tim, but frames it as a thank-you for helping her move into a safehouse. Tim doesn’t really notice the overture at the time. It takes a few more chapters before she finally succeeds when Steph accompanies Tim to the next meeting, with everyone chowing down on pizza bagels and soda while they properly hash out their situation.
• Team Mercy vs. Team Murder: Comes up a fair amount, because shinobi are mostly on Team Murder by default. Kei doesn't avoid killing people because she is a particularly merciful person; rather, she wants to avoid negative attention from locals.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Much to Hayate's dismay, Kei and Jason do not get along. Neither of them have shaken off the bitter feelings formed by their first impressions of each other:
  • While Kei states multiple times in her narration that she doesn't particularly care about what Red Hood gets up to in Gotham, her friends also realize she's jealous of how quickly Jason rose in Hayate's regard despite only knowing each other for a month. Obito and Rin outright laugh in Kei's face as a result.
  • Jason believes that Kei, as Hayate's nominal guardian, is responsible for his Child Soldier status. He's thrown when he realizes she isn't Conditioned to Accept Horror the way that Hayate is and is far more culturally adept than her brother. From an outsider's point of view, the knowledge Kei retains as a transmigrator (and Hayate doesn't share at all) looks like a case of neglect so strange and thorough that it makes no sense.
• There's No Place Like Home: Kei's ultimate goal. Holding herself aloof from the conflicts of the story, her only real goal is to go home with her brother and probably never have to think about Gotham ever again. While Hayate does share this goal, he's much more willing to get involved in Gotham's chaotic elements because they're interesting and he is very bored.
• Tranquillizer Dart: Rather than normal guns or some kind of exotic effect, Kei notes that the League of Assassins seems to favor this weapon type when dealing with her. Whatever is in them is clearly nasty; one of its known components is Fear Toxin.
  • Instant Sedation: When Tim is hit with a drugged dart meant for Kei, both of them immediately realize the dose is way too high because of how quickly he succumbs.
  • One Dose Fits All: Averted. Kei's aware that any compound designed to bring down someone like her is not suited for use on normal humans. Due to the way even normal sedative dosages are based on body mass and metabolism, an assassin accidentally hit by three full darts overdoses and dies offscreen.
• Trapped in Another World: What this story is from Kei and Hayate’s perspective. The actual process of finding a way between worlds is seemingly more arduous from Konoha's side than Gotham's, hindering retrieval efforts.
• Trauma Button: Given the cast, there are more than a few characters who have triggers.
  • Hayate loathes and fears Zetsu clones due to the events of October 10th in Catch Your Breath. The hate is more obvious until he gets cornered or pinned, which makes him panic. He has difficulty talking about the incident, but eventually explains to Jason that he was violently kidnapped and his mother killed while trying to rescue him. When Jason attempts to leave Hayate behind when there's a known Zetsu threat in the city, Hayate breaks down and begs Jason to stay until he changes his mind. Kei recalls Hayate's reaction being bad enough that they ended up selling their family home to get away from the memories.
  • Kei snaps even at allies at the thought of Hayate being hurt or dying, and people around her are usually informed of the impending danger by the sudden burst of Killing Intent. As she's forced to admit to the Bats, she's had recurring nightmares of Hayate's canon death since she was a child.
  • Jason's problems, of course, center on the circumstances of his violent death and traumatic return to life. Hayate notes that he can't think about the future beyond his impending confrontation with Batman and the Joker, and seems to dissociate when the subject otherwise comes up.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: This is how all of Hayate's shinobi training makes him look to people who aren't familiar with his background. While he's fourteen and therefore on the older side of this trope, Hayate is quick to defend Red Hood (a known murderer) to Tim's face, can and does break into Jason's safehouses, and is completely dismissive of both men he killed at the beginning of the story. He also vows to kill the Joker if the man ever gets close enough to hurt Jason again, which Jason finds both heartwarming and disturbing.
• Tsundere: A trope name-dropped by Hayate while describing Jason's personality. As The Empath, he sees through Jason's bluster easily and tends to maneuver around his issues more adeptly than most, rendering him basically immune to the Red Hood's wrath. Kei immediately concludes that internet access has ruined Hayate's vocabulary upon hearing this.
• Vocal Dissonance:
  • Isobu has a higher voice than a being of his power level generally would. It's about as light as Hayate's, and gets even squeakier when he's placed into an artificial body the size of a football.
  • Jason is more than a little weirded out to find that Pakkun a) can talk and b) has the voice of a middle-aged man.
• Walking Techbane: Hayate has a brush with this trope. While he adapts quickly to his phone when given one, his primary nature transformation is still Lightning Release. As a result, a bit of carelessness on his part fries everything electronic on Tim's Robin costume more than once.
• Weirdness Search and Rescue: Since Kei and Hayate are important to many people in Konoha’s upper administration personally and professionally, the village’s interludes show them working out how to be this.
  • They finally succeed in chapter 20, with Obito, Rin, and Kakashi arriving in Gotham via Kamui.
• White Mask of Doom: Kei’s vigilante guise consists of one of these worn over her face, which she admits is just an art project everyone is now taking too seriously. She still considers it more effective a disguise than the classic Robin Domino Mask. This actually ends up working against her and Hayate reuniting quickly, because otherwise their Strong Family Resemblance is obvious.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: One of Kei's major gripes about Red Hood's plot to take over Gotham's criminal underground. Kei knows Jason's endgame is a confrontation with Batman and the Joker, but she still thinks the Joker should just be unceremoniously shot and put out of everyone's misery.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Jason’s ironclad policy within his territory, which is the main difference between his gang’s behavior before and after his takeover. He hates those who target children more than any other class of criminal. When it comes to dealing with the ninjas in Gotham, he's furious at the idea of Child Soldiers and refuses to let Hayate follow him around as a sidekick. It’s also what gets him stuck looking after Hayate in the first place, because he’s unwilling to put Hayate into the hands of any of the corrupt authorities in the city.
  • In chapter 20, this finally slams directly into Jason's antipathy for the Robin role when Hayate brings an unconscious Tim to him to ask for medical help. After an internal struggle, Jason decides his principles override his grudge and breaks out the antidotes. After learning that Kei and her friends are also underage and that their world has a systemic Child Soldier problem, he reluctantly puts aside his many misgivings and tries to reach out to them a little more.
  • Tim, noticing the ages of the Konoha shinobi he's met so far, theorizes that they don't adhere to this principle. A quick glance at the source material confirms this.
• Wretched Hive: Kei's opinion of Gotham, due primarily to frustration. The city’s aura of despair and gloom interferes with her Supernatural Sensitivity and gives her sensory overload headaches that require either Isobu’s chakra or a lot of painkillers to counteract. Most of the money she acquires is from mugging people who clearly planned to rob her first, and the social services and police in the city are untrustworthy from her perspective. Also, every single time she’s gone out, someone’s been shooting up the place.
  • If there’s one place in Gotham that exemplifies this, it’s Crime Alley/Park Row, the crime-riddled neighborhood where the Waynes were gunned down decades ago. Under Jason’s new management, Hayate notes that it’s actually improving.
• Wrong Assumption:
  • Due to Kei’s costume choices, Nightwing and Robin assume she’s a new vigilante or a new rogue in town. In truth, Kei is Trapped in Another World and looking for her missing brother, but doesn’t trust any of the other characters enough to ask for help for a long time. The costume was a whim and now she’s too far into the game to turn back.
  • Jason, who is familiar with the League of Assassins, figures that Hayate is a product of another secret murder-conspiracy cult he just hasn’t heard of. He’s wrong, but it’s reasonable based on what he knows.
  • Everyone who meets Kei and Hayate reasonably figures they’re standard Earth metahumans, at least until Tim’s DNA analysis comes back and reveals nonhuman heritage of an unknown origin. When Tim explains this to Kei later on, she's in no mood to even contemplate the idea of aliens and just grumbles that this might as well be a real thing.

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