Jason Todd (Red Hood)

**Jason Todd** is a vigilante who operates mainly in **Gotham City**, consumed with the need to do more after the passing of his wife.

### History

Raised in the slums within the poor side of Gotham City was a dark haired boy, born to petty criminal Willis Todd, and struggling drug addict Catherine Todd. Unable to afford to even send their son to public school, all while inducing constant emotional neglect and abuse, Jason was constantly involved in trouble at a young age. Stealing and fighting were simply the norm. Everything changed one day his father hadn’t come home. Unsurprisingly, he was arrested and thrown in prison. This pushed the struggling Catherine over edge and within the year she died due to drug overdose. Forced to learn how to live on his own in the rough streets of Gotham as a teenager, Jason was involved in gang activity just to survive. At age fifteen, he was arrested for stripping, stealing and flipping car parts. Instead of being placed in a juvenile detention center, Jason was placed in an orphanage where he was soon found by his adoptive mother, Sheila Haywood. Within his new home, while still a troublemaker, Todd finished online schooling and began to gain a new light to his life. Once again tragedy struck in Gotham’s recreational park where a random act of violence abruptly erupted at the hands of henchmen employed by notorious Gotham serial killer, The Joker. Sheila was murdered in the mass shooting, along with most of her extended family, which left Jason who had survived, ultimately alone again.

Already eighteen years old, Jason found it necessary to learn how to live on his own, finding his time occupied by a part time job as well as online college courses to strive toward a degree in mechanical engineering. He soon went on to meet Isabel Ardila at a local bar, the two exchanged numbers and began dating. Time passed and within the span of three years, the young couple was living together, building onto what was to be considered a serious relationship. Todd earned his masters degree in mechanical engineering, while Isabel enrolled to begin a nursing degree. The two eloped and Isabel found herself pregnant, the couple expecting their first child, which forced Jason’s hand in proposal. Not even ninety days after learning of the exciting news, Jason and Isabel’s apartment was broken into late one night. First expecting the typical burglary, Jason was soon hit with the sad realization that it was criminal mastermind, Black Mask and his goons. Standing no real match for the overwhelming intruding force, and despite trying to resist, Jason was brutally beaten within an inch of his life with a crowbar, barely kept within consciousness as he helplessly watched the execution of his expecting fiancé. It was revealed to him that his father, Willis, had numerous unpaid debts owed to Sionis and his criminal organization. Willis had apparently lied, selling out his only son and placing his burdens on him in last ditch effort to cover his own debt.

After spending months recovering in the hospital, a depressed, rage driven Jason turned to self development with an ultimate goal to hunt down and kill Black Mask. He trained extensively in the use of various firearms and military tactics, and over the course of the warring years, delving into the art of demolitions and handling explosive ordinanc, having found numerous prior service members to help him. Jason took the final step in this process, traveling across the world and stumbling across the Chamber of All, and finding the monks that resided within who called themselves the All Caste. Jason was accepted and taken amongst their ranks, receiving masterful training from their leader, Ducra, in the art of hand to hand combat as well as various forms of traditional weaponry. After a couple of years spent training with the All Caste, Jason made his inevitable return to Gotham. Not much had changed, the city itself was still plagued with crime, despite there being the seemingly always looming “superhero” presence there. Jason had taken a profound disliking toward the so called heroes of Gotham, and in particular, Batman, who had thrown Mask’s highest ranking underlines in prison numerous times before the death of his fiancé and unborn child. He strongly believed Gotham’s justice system, Arkham Asylum, and the heroes that caused it to flood over with criminals, didn’t work. He attributed much of this toxicity to the rich elitists over Gotham that did everything but help the already corrupted city. Morphing into his own vigilante-like persona, Todd developed a high-tech red helmet as a bit of an identifier, with a built in HUD, night vision, infrared, as well as other accessories, to help aid him.

Jason began his tenure as this figurehead by breaking into Gotham State Penitentiary, locating specifically one cell which was his father’s, parting a few words just before placing one well aimed bullet into the man’s skull and making his exit. In the ongoing months, Jason made it a point to use his own method of cleaning up Gotham to ensure what happened to him can’t happen to anybody else, ever again. He opted to graphically murder the worst of criminals, those who “deserved” it. Sporting a blood-red makeshift bat symbol across his breastplate as a form of mockery toward Batman, he had became the hero’s antithesis. People of Gotham began to dub his newfound alias as the “Red Hood” and the name undoubtedly stuck. Once establishing himself, operating out of an abandoned warehouse, Jason funded himself as well as armed himself using the money and weapons gained from various black market dealers and gang members that he had dealt with. He doesn’t believe he’s necessary for Gotham as much as simply doing what ultimately needs to be done, reminding himself that crime can’t be truly exterminated, only controlled through violent force of action.