Robin's Egg

Haunt-Egg-d Gotham

He was so tired of everything at this point. Jason skillfully dodged behind a stack of crates as several gang members decided to test their aim at their local Red Hood. Waiting for the gunfire to calm down, he took the opportunity to fire at the crate suspended in the air above the members on the other side. The men screamed as they dodged or got hit by the container when it fell. It was a quick round-up of the bastards once they scattered and Jason made sure they learned their lesson for next time. He grappled up to the nearest rooftop and jumped over a couple more before he stopped and let out a string of insults that got garbled by his modulator.

Why had it ended up that way?! No matter how hard he tried, without fail, something intervened. Ever since Jason returned the egg to his brother, he had tried to do a deeper investigation. It was suspicious, though harmless at the moment, but he needed to know more about it if his little brother was deadest on carrying it everywhere with him. But each time he tried to get to the manor, tried to catch the demon brat on patrol, hell, even try to stalk him at school (more stealthily this time. He learned his lesson from the last attempt.), something got in the way! One time a gang shootout happened right in front of him when he went to chase after his little brother. Another time, when he saw Damian walking near a history museum for school, there was a rogue attack and he had to play the helpless victim the entire time until the others took care of it. When he went to the source, the manor, all of the traps that Bruce had installed to stop anyone from getting onto the premises went off on him.

Which was odd. Yes, Bruce changed up the security regularly but Jason was on the accepted list (he checked). So why were traps that Bruce, the Dark Knight, made himself going off for absolutely no reason? Upon closer inspection of the devices, there hadn't been anything wrong with them. No hardware was messed up and there wasn't any software designed to attack him on sight. They just... went off. Because he didn't want to have to traverse a literal minefield (or give the others blackmail for triggering the traps in the first place), Jason went back to avoiding the manor for now. But he knew there was something going on. He just didn't have access.

Then there was the stupider things that just got in his way. Crowds of people would suddenly block his path, a mugging here, a robbery there, some screams that would lead him on a chase to nowhere. Key information about a case would suddenly fall into his lap. Not to mention those awful GIW agents making his life a personal hell by chasing him all across Gotham when they got wind of him. The jammer Tim had given him could only do so much. If they got within a certain radius, their radars went off anyway. A lot of the people they were kidnapping under the guise of the Anti-Ecto Acts were from Crime Alley and the Narrows. Sadly, it made sense. A lot of death happened in the poorer district of Gotham but that didn't give them the right to just take the people because they could. Meaning the only time that he had been able to get close was when he joined the raid on the GIW base.

But even then, he hadn't been able to investigate!

Damian had gotten separated during the fight and was gone for a good few minutes before returning as if nothing happened with Tim giving his little brother the sus look(TM). It was a little nice to know that he wasn't the only one suspicious of Damian right now. Though for entirely different reasons. But before he could question the kid, he got pulled into help cleaning up the mess and making sure all of those kidnapped were okay. He may have gotten some vindictive therapy on a few of the agents he helped gather up. What Bruce didn't know about wouldn't hurt. Besides they would live. Mostly. After that, Damian was already back at the manor and he could no longer get close.

It was so annoying.

It was as though the world didn't want him getting close to his little brother unless the younger was in danger. Jason sighed heavily into his helmet. This stupid shootout was the latest thing to stop him from going after Robin while out on patrol. Most gangs have learned by now to not try anything in his presence but something set the men off and he had to handle it before others got hurt. Now Robin was gone and so was his attempt at investigating. Why was this happening? All of these things were too coincidental but they kept happening so often that he couldn't help but think that there was something else at play here. Jason either had really bad luck right now (or good depending on what happened. With the amount of trash he had been able to uncover in the last few months alone, most would consider it good.) or he was cursed.