“I want to buy a gun.”
Bernard’s head flies up, the pack of vigilante game cards slipping from his fingers and skidding underneath a nearby shelf.
“You what!?”
Bruce can’t help the way his lips twitch at the absolute horror on the other boy’s face.
“A gun, Bernard. Do keep up.”
“No, nononono, hell no!” Bernard exclaims, arms pin wheeling comically.
You answered an ask about Bruce freaking out over Jason getting captured by the bats in your AtM au and I just imagine Bruce curling up in Jay's bed and bawling his eyes out while holding Jason's pillow, crying himself to sleep, then waking up determined to stop at nothing to get his dad back, so he picks himself back up and starts scheming immediately 🦇
Yup! That is a very accurate depiction of what would happen. Mini Bruce also totally sleeps in Jason’s bed sometimes after a bad nightmare, or when Jason takes longer than usual to get back from patrol. 🥺
Jason is a huge anchor point for Bruce’s emotional wellbeing and he has already made much more progress in recovering from his parents’ death than Og!Bruce did in a decade.
And with Jason forcibly taken from him… well, neither Bruce has a good track record with losing parents. And unfortunately for Og!bruce, Mockingjay has no compunctions about threatening to go a little Robin King on them if they don’t give Jason back this instance.
Ngl, the whole "Shoot All The Bad Guys" thing with Jason and mini Bruce is cathartic, but can't help thinking of the consequences.
One of the arguments that surface following a real life cop shooting someone is that trigger happy cops make things riskier even for other cops - that, once people know any encounter might end in death, they will start shooting first instead of considering giving up.
The Gotham situation changing like that with Red Hood involved.
Till then, you know you can surrender. The Bats don't kill. If you're a regular minion, when Bats attack, you know you always have the option of just dropping your weapon and letting them take you.
But Red Hood kills. And the kid he has with him is even more insane.
Sure, Jay only kills the ones he's sure deserves it, but how are the regular people supposed to know that for sure? Or trust it?
Surrender is no longer an option. If you want to survive, you have to kill him and the kid first. They never used to shoot to kill against Robins, not when they're this little, but now it's their only option to survive.
And criminals are likely to take far more risks to escape Red Hood than they do with the Bats. Maybe a random pickpocket or someone seeing Red Hood or Mockingjay and running into the traffic or leaping off a roof in terror...
We haven’t seen much about how Jason runs his crime empire in AoM yet! So while he definitely picks up killing the bad people again, he doesn’t do it for fun or indiscriminately. It’s very apparent for anybody who cares to look for it that only the big players get methodically removed from the playing field.
During a shootout he doesn’t actively go for killing everyone involved, he’s just looking to end it fast and come out on top. The casualties do increase in these situations, obviously, but Jason sure as hell isn’t going to shoot someone who actively surrenders to be taken into custody. (Unless they’re on his hit list for whatever reason).
And we also need to keep in mind that while some criminals may feel uncomfortable fighting against a child, most probably wouldn’t care and even try to use their superior size and strength to their advantage. It’s Gotham, after all. Most of them wouldn’t hesitate to kill either Robin or Mockingjay, or worse.
Moreover, Jason is still operating as a crime lord. Right now he’s an anti hero at best, a villain at worst. His only concern is to keep mini Bruce safe and clean up Crime Alley, with the added bonus of pissing off the batfam.
But rest assured we’ll definitely get to see some GCPD interaction in the future, and other scenes that will depict the impact Red Hood and his sidekick have on Gotham at large :)
Is Jason still a drug dealer in AtM? Would he risk getting involved in that with a kid to look after?
Yes he is. It’s mentioned throughout chapter 1-3 that he’s going out to reestablish his hold over Crime Alley.
I thought of something. In UTRH Jason is pretty suicidal more in the movie. That showdown with Joker and Bruce may not happen because Jason was planning to die if Bruce picked Joker. He can't risk that with a kid at home. Ironically Mini Bruce does for Jason what Tim did for Bruce by taking up Robin.
Yup, exactly! Not only does mini Bruce keep Jason from falling too far down the rabbit hole of crime and murder, he’s also actively counteracting his self destructive, borderline suicidal tendencies simply by being there. It’s the same the other way around tho because Jason still has nightmares about the time Bruce asked Jason to shoot him
Tim and mini Bruce can bond over their emotional wrecks of a mentor 😭🤣
How would Mini Bruce from your Antithesis of Magic AU react, after he debuts as Mockingjay (suck a clever name btw I cannot put into words the joy your works bring me), how would he react to messing up on patrol and Red Hood protects him but gets captured by the bats in the process?
So mini bruce escapes, but Jason gets captured, and mini Bruce doesn't know if they're putting him in Arkham (with the clown, the clown that haunts Jason's nightmares years later, they're gonna put him with the clown) or taking him to the Bat cave (dark and dank cave, they'll put him in a cell, it might be small enough to remind him of the coffin he had to claw his way out of), or worse, taking him to the justice league watchtower (somewhere mini Bruce cannot even hope of breaking into, somewhere he can't reach Jason, his only remaining family, he can't save him there) 🦇
He would raise hell on a city wide scale.
There would be a day of awful, mind numbing panic and desperation on Bruce’s behalf. A day in which he acts his age and just breaks down, crying and just wanting his dad Jason back and hug him and tell him everything is going to be alright because Jason promised he’d never leave him—
And then Bruce would methodically try to block out his acute mental distress and fall into a clinical, single minded focus.
Because they took Jason away and he’s going to get him back no matter what. Bruce will NOT let the bats win. They want war? They can bloody well have war.
And mini Bruce, taught personally by a theater kid, knows how to put on a show. Knows how to go absolutely batshit insane if he has to. It’s not even hard with what he knows is at stake here.
I can totally see our little gremlin plant several large scale bombs across the city. Even in civilian hubs. They’re not rigged to blow, but the Bats don’t know that. And Bruce would make sure to make an ultimatum that’s “either give him back or you’ll have the blood of approximately five hundred thousand people on your hands” and emphasize it with blowing up an abandoned apartment building on the outskirts of Diamond District. There aren’t any casualties, only a couple mild injuries resulting from debris, but the message is clear.
The bombs exist. And Mockingjay is more than willing to detonate them.
I'm reading the whole Mockingjay fluffy/hilarious headcanons, but defaulting to horror...
Am I the only one who thinks Jason, himself very messed up, teaching a mini Bruce that killing is okay if it's a "bad guy" is going to end with a lot more bodies than even Red Hood would be okay with?
Yeah, Bruce is a smart kid, but he is an eight year old kid, and very traumatized. Kids tend towards binary good guys and bad guys thinking. Elite kid Bruce is... not that likely to get why some bad guys should be spared, or why he can't have fun with (torture) all the bad guys.
I'm picturing Mockingjay killing some teenaged would-be mugger in Crime Alley and being utterly puzzled why Jason thinks this bad guy didn't deserve death.
He was just hungry and desperate? He needed the money to live? Well, some bad guy who was hungry and desperate killed his mom and dad! Would Jason have helped Joe Chill escape if they had caught him?
In Antithesis of Magic Bruce is currently ten! (I think. I haven’t checked but he’s either ten or eleven)
Very young, I agree. But despite his age he has a good sense of right and wrong, and all Jason’s influence did was make him become more flexible in how to deal with the really bad people.
Right now we’re still at the very beginning of the story, and there’s a massive amount of world building and character development still ahead of us. However, Bruce does not kill people himself. And he doesn’t like Jason doing so, either. He understands why Jason does it, and he trusts him enough to only kill the people who truly deserve it, but at the core of it all Bruce would still opt to take the non-lethal route. Which means he probably won’t fall into the rabbit hole too deeply.
Jason and Bruce balance each other out like that. With Bruce’s insistence on keeping it to necessary kills only, and Jason’s refusal to stop killing. A fragile balance, yes. But also one that allows them to harmonize as well as they do.
Just some things i think MockingJay would say to the bats. MockingJay to the Bats : id say it was a pleasure to meet you but it really isnt .
MockingJay : I kniw somthing you dont ~ i know somthing you'll never know~
MockingJay: (screams at the top of his lungs immatating Jasons voice) Fuck off Dickwing!
MockingJay to Nightwing: you couldnt even save robin what makes you think you can "save" me?
MockingJay to batman: OH MY GOD YOUR SO BORING!! this is why jason left you.
Meanwhile Red Hood : if anyone hurts him ill make Robins death look like a mercy kill compared to what ill do to them .
Lmao I can’t WAIT to debut Mockingjay. I’m itching to get back to Antithesis of Magic so hard and I love you for sending your thoughts on these because they’re so, SO good and absolutely something mini Bruce would say because he has the Sass gene AND Jason Peter Todd as a role model which — rip 🪦 batfam. Rip.
Honestly I’m saving all these in my AoM file for later reference/inspiration. The one that absolutely ended me tho was Jason’s “I’ll make Robin’s death look like a mercy kill” because— holy shit. I can see the bats going absolutely ballistic in response to that comment. (While mini Bruce is laughing so hard he almost falls off a gargoyle)
(Haven’t read this yet) does mini Bruce know he’s mocking his older self? If yes I’m laughing my ass off
Yup, he knows! And he very much dislikes his older self a lot. 🤭
Just some things i think MockingJay would say to the bats. MockingJay to the Bats : id say it was a pleasure to meet you but it really isnt .
MockingJay : I kniw somthing you dont ~ i know somthing you'll never know~
MockingJay: (screams at the top of his lungs immatating Jasons voice) Fuck off Dickwing!
MockingJay to Nightwing: you couldnt even save robin what makes you think you can "save" me?
MockingJay to batman: OH MY GOD YOUR SO BORING!! this is why jason left you.
Meanwhile Red Hood : if anyone hurts him ill make Robins death look like a mercy kill compared to what ill do to them .
Lmao I can’t WAIT to debut Mockingjay. I’m itching to get back to Antithesis of Magic so hard and I love you for sending your thoughts on these because they’re so, SO good and absolutely something mini Bruce would say because he has the Sass gene AND Jason Peter Todd as a role model which — rip 🪦 batfam. Rip.
Honestly I’m saving all these in my AoM file for later reference/inspiration. The one that absolutely ended me tho was Jason’s “I’ll make Robin’s death look like a mercy kill” because— holy shit. I can see the bats going absolutely ballistic in response to that comment. (While mini Bruce is laughing so hard he almost falls off a gargoyle)
Just gonna say in the "Jason raises bruce from another dimension" au that Ra's Al Ghul learning about a child bruce who is becoming Okay with violence and killing would probably have diamonds in his eyes like he just won the lottery. Jason would also probably try and kill him (fucking with Jason is one thing but the version of his dad that's his kid? Nu-uh)
Jason would commit war crimes for little Bruce. That is a fact. If Ra’s tries anything, Jason is going to remind him just where the words “You’ve no idea the curse you unleashed upon this world” came from.
But you can bet Ra’s will be tempted. Very tempted.
The perfect heir…. Now there’s a thought. And wouldn’t that make Damian practically obsolete? 🫢👀
For antithesis of magic, would the bats ever look at mini Bruce (who’s called Mockingjay, speaks with kid-Jason’s voice (behind a modulator I think you said) and has a similar build to the kid who died) and wonder if maybe he is Jason?
Like, maybe they make the connection that Red Hood is too familiar with Jason’s story to have not known him personally, and maybe the think that he and Jay were friends, (and in my mind, they think that maybe Hood looked out for Jason on the streets) and come to the conclusion that he went mad with grief when his friend died, somehow resurrected Jason and like, magically bound him (or something).
Like, the bats think mini-Bruce is their dead brother/son and promise (too his face) that ‘they’ll figure out how to free him’. Then when they discover Red Hood is Jason they’re like ‘who tf is the kid then?!’
Oooooo thats an EXCELLENT setup!!!
The Batfam is most definitely going to draw… several conclusions about Mockingjay’s identity. All of them wrong. But I can see them totally getting hung up about this theory because it would mean seeing Jason again—
And the looming heartbreak of thinking they’ll have to break the necromancy spell or whatever and essentially kill him… oh man.
Truly, this one’s good.
I've been trying to hold off on reading "The Antithesis Of Magic" until there were more chapters, but I couldn't wait since it seemed like such an interesting premise. I'm enjoying it thoroughly so far. :)
Ahhh I’m so happy you like it 💚💚💚
It’s gonna be a monster fic so there’s still a looot of things ahead of us ✨
How do the rest of the rogues react to anti robin?
“Oh god, there’s another one…. Wait, abort mission! ABORT MISSION! I JUST SAW THAT THING STAB SOMEONE IN THE EYE!!!”
“No thank you, I ain’t touching that thing with a ten foot pole. That one’s Hood’s, haven’t you heard?”
“Are you crazy? That ain’t Robin. It’s the other one. I swear one of mine saw him wave at the Bat with a severed arm the other day…”
“If it’s traffic light colors, proceed. If you see red, blue and gold, fuckin run.”
“I don’t care if it’s just the brat. Where he is, Hood ain’t far behind.”
“Nah, that one don’t belong to the Bat. He’s Red Hood’s kid. The brat won’t kill ya, but he sure will.”
— assorted quotes of criminals/rogues about the anti-Robin, as overheard by Robin :)
Robin tim and Mockingjay teaminf up would be the gremlin duo of the batfam , trio if you include steph. Tim is slightly unhinged at best and i feel like mini bruce would encourage that.
Very true… but first mini Bruce will have to get past his hate (by proxy of Jason hating Robin) for him before they can even think of working together 🤭
Mini bruce : did you know that atoms never touch anything, and since were made of atoms weve never touched anything .
So to answer your question , no i did not kill that guy.
Batman:...
Red hood :(trying not to laugh)
Lmaooo yeah that characterization is pretty much on point.
Jason is a proud dad, no matter how much this bratty attitude wants to make him tear his hair out ksksks
How would Mini Bruce react to Batman slitting Jason's throat? Maybe not even during the Joker confrontation, maybe Batman was especially pissed the Red Hood had a child working for him and he threw the batarang but it missed and hit Jay's throat?
Oh geez, I think he’d go nuclear. Like, full out Robin King insanity for a hot second.
It’s going to become more apparent the further we progress through the story, but Jason really managed to establish himself as mini!Bruce’s parental figure during the time he spent in that alternate dimension, and a lot of the trust and love between them was established because Jason proved time and time again that he’s a capable fighter. Someone who’s not going down easily (the way his parents did). Someone who won’t ever leave Bruce behind if he can help it.
So, watching an older version of himself seemingly kill the only family he had left? In such a brutal fashion?
Yeah, you can bet this is the one time mini Bruce would go in for the kill… against himself.
And depending on how that goes and how long that rage and hysterical despair lasts… he would drop down by Jason’s side and just— scream. And cry. And try to stop all that blood from leaving Jason because Jason needs that blood please oh god why is there so much blood where are the pearls why can’t he hear the gunshot—
How would Mini Bruce react to Jason getting sent to Arkham or something in the antithesis of magic au? Say it was either before Bruce took up Mockingjay, or maybe he wasn't patrolling that night for some reason, and the bats caught Jason and throw him into Arkham. Would Bruce go after the bats? Or would he first try to break Jason out?
Mini Bruce is endlessly protective of Jason, so he’d definitely go for breaking him out first. And he’d succeed, because that kid is a menace AND a genius.
And after that the bats are free game and mini Bruce would have so much fun hounding them in all ways non-lethal lol ✨
