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The grimy air of the warehouse was thick, not just with the smells of rust and river filth, but with the palpable heat of respect and terror. Gotham was a city of shadows and fear, but in this particular abandoned warehouse on the industrial docks, it was a kingdom. Jason Todd’s kingdom. As Red Hood, he’d carved out a territory run on strict, no-nonsense rules, a brutal meritocracy where his word was the only gospel. And right now, he was in the middle of laying down the law.
He stood on a crumbling crate, a dark silhouette against the single, dusty beam of a flickering industrial light. The assembled men, two dozen ex-mob enforcers, muscle-for-hire, and wannabe kingpins, didn't dare look directly at him for long. Their eyes kept skittering away from the stark, white lenses of his helmet, a predator’s gaze in the gloom.
“—and if I catch any of you dealing to kids again,” he growled, the voice modulator in his helmet stripping his tone of all humanity, making the words vibrate with raw, physical menace. He paused, letting the silence stretch until it was taut enough to snap. “I’m not going to break your legs.” He took a single, deliberate step forward, the heavy tread of his boot echoing in the cavernous space. “I’m going to use them for firewood. Are we clear?”
A ragged, immediate chorus of “Yes, Boss!” and “Crystal, Hood!” echoed back, shaky and unified. These were hard men, men who had broken bones and extorted lives, but under his gaze, they were reduced to scared children, desperate to please the sternest teacher in a school for the damned.
It was perfect. The air hummed with the precise frequency of control he demanded. A familiar, cold flicker of satisfaction ignited in Jason’s chest. This was it. Not the chaotic vengeance of the Batman, not the naive hope of the Batfamily. This was control. This was order. His order. And for a moment, in the heart of Gotham's rotting core, it was enough.
And then, the side door creaked open.
It was a small, human-sized door, warped by damp and disuse. The sound was a high, complaining whine of rusted hinges, utterly alien in the tense silence he had so carefully cultivated. Every head, including Jason’s, swiveled towards the noise. He expected a rival, a stray Bat, or at the very least, a lost, drunken dockworker.
A goose waddled in.
It was a large, pristine white goose, its feathers almost glowing in the grimy half-light. It had a garishly orange beak and beady, unnervingly intelligent black eyes that seemed to absorb everything at once. It moved with a serene, waddling confidence that was entirely out of place, its webbed feet making soft, pattering sounds on the concrete. It stopped just inside the doorway, surveyed the scene of two dozen hardened criminals and their armor-clad, feared leader, and let out a quiet, conversational “Honk.”
The spell was broken. The goons shuffled, their unified fear fracturing into pockets of confused muttering and awkwardly suppressed snorts. Jason felt the meticulously built atmosphere of dread begin to leak out of the room like air from a punctured tire. He sighed internally, a wave of profound annoyance washing over him. Just his luck. A bird. A literal, feathery, honking bird was about to undermine his authority. He decided to ignore it. The best course of action was to pretend it wasn't happening, to reassert dominance through sheer force of presence.
“As I was saying,” he boomed, the modulator cracking like a whip, forcing every eye back to him. He could feel the momentum starting to return. “The shipment from the south comes in on Thursday. I want—”
HONK!
This was not a conversational honk. It was a loud, sharp, and deeply insistent blare that cut through his sentence like a shiv. The goose was now several feet into the room, staring directly at him, its head tilted in what could only be interpreted as a challenge.
The sound was louder this time, more insistent. The goose was now standing directly in the centre of the open space between Jason and his men, staring directly at him.
One of the goons, a braver idiot named Leo, snickered. “Uh, Boss? You got a… delivery?”
Jason’s jaw tightened beneath the helmet. “Someone get rid of it.”
Two burly men detached themselves from the group and approached the goose with hesitant swagger. “C’mon, bird. Scram.”
The goose looked at the first man’s brightly polished steel-toed boot. It looked… interested. Then, with a speed that defied its comical appearance, it darted forward, snatched the man’s shoelace in its beak, and yanked.
The goon yelped, hopping on one foot as the goose systematically untied his boot with a series of precise, furious tugs. The second man reached for it, and the goose spun, wings flapping, and delivered a solid, startlingly loud thwack to the side of his head with its wing. The man stumbled back, clutching his ear.
A wave of uneasy laughter rippled through the crowd. Jason felt a vein throbbing in his temple.
“Enough,” he snarled, stomping forward. This was his show. He was the Red Hood. He’d fought the Batman, the Joker, and gods from other dimensions. A goose was nothing.
The goose, having successfully untied one boot and demoralized one thug, turned its attention to Jason. It didn’t run. It didn’t flinch. It just tilted its head, its black eyes seeming to see right through the reinforced helmet into his very soul.
Jason reached for it. Big mistake.
The goose erupted into a flurry of hisses, wings, and pure, unadulterated chaos. It didn’t just peck; it feinted. It didn’t just flap; it launched a multi-vector assault. It dodged Jason’s grab with an almost preternatural agility, then latched onto the reinforced kevlar of his pant leg with its beak and started shaking its head violently, making a sound like a woodpecker on meth.
“Get off!” Jason barked, trying to shake his leg. The goose held on, a feathered anchor of spite.
The goons were no longer just laughing uneasily; they were howling. One was bent double, slapping his knee. Leo was filming on his phone, tears streaming down his face.
Fuelled by a rage usually reserved for the Joker, Jason made a desperate lunge. The goose released his leg, causing him to overbalance, and in a move that would have made Nightwing proud, it darted between his legs.
Jason stumbled, arms pinwheeling. The goose, now behind him, gave a triumphant HONK and delivered a sharp, stinging peck to the back of his knee. His leg buckled. The Red Hood, the terror of the Gotham underworld, went down hard on one knee with a grunt of pure shock.
Silence fell, broken only by the goose calmly waddling over to the dropped phone Leo had been filming with. It pecked at the screen, seemingly approving of its work, then turned and strutted towards the door it came from.
As it reached the exit, it paused, looked back at the kneeling, humiliated crime lord and his utterly dissolved gang of criminals, and let out one last, soft, dismissive “honk.” Then it was gone.
Jason slowly pushed himself to his feet. The warehouse was dead silent, the only sound the faint, distant honk from outside. He could feel the weight of two dozen pairs of eyes on him. The aura of fear was gone, replaced by the trembling, barely-suppressed mirth of men who had just seen their invincible boss get schooled by a waterfowl.
He straightened his jacket. He adjusted his helmet. He cleared his throat, the modulator making it sound like a garbage disposal choking on a bone.
“The shipment,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Is on Thursday.”
He turned and walked stiffly towards his motorcycle, the echo of his own footsteps sounding suspiciously like mocking laughter. He didn’t look back. He knew what he would see: not fear, not respect, but the memory of a goose, and the man it had made a fool of.
Somewhere in the rafters, a certain Clown Prince of Crime, who had released the goose as a prank, was weeping with laughter. And in the Batcave, a certain alert would ping on the Batcomputer, tagged as “Low Priority – Anomalous Avian Activity.” Batman would watch the 30-second clip Leo had already uploaded to Gotham’s underworld meme forum, and for just a second, the corner of his mouth would twitch.
It was a bad night for crime in Gotham. But it was a great night for the goose.