Chapter 1: A Day in The Life

A/N: (I feel obligated to warn about gore, because this story is gonna be full of Mortal Kombat levels of gore)

He stood on the corner of an apartment complex's roof, his shoulder-length silver hair billowing out behind him and shimmering in the full moonlight. His black chrome bodysuit, modified slightly by another less violent vigilante friend, gleamed, contrasted by a logo on the back. He leaned slightly against his military-grade steel staff, his extremely fragile bones creaking a little after his kill of the night. At his feet, lay a headless body, with his staff jammed through the throat. On the pavement below, in an alley, is a head splattered upon the seedy asphalt.

Blindside removed his weight from his staff, and he retreated from the rooftop. Collectively, news outlets didn't use Blindside's persona in their reports. They referred to him as the Guardian Killer. He hated it. Only other vigilantes and criminals knew his actual alias.

He made it to his apartment on the other side of Gotham and walked in, setting his staff by the door. He went into his bathroom and washed off his dark red blindfold facepaint before he stripped his bodysuit off of his horrifically scarred body. His sense of sight engaged, his hearing subsiding so he could make sure the facepaint was gone. He hurriedly threw a black tank top on and gently carried himself back to his bed so he didn't fucking die from moving wrong. On the way, the moonlight struck him at the same time he caught himself in a full-length mirror on his closet door.

He paused and looked at himself in the mirror, shivering under his own cold stare from overcast grey eyes. (not cataracts, his eye color is grey) His eyes gravitated to the grotesque circular yellowish scar at the base of his neck, where his collarbone met his sternum, and his eyes momentarily burned, threatening him with unbidden tears. He shut off his sight for his own well-being, and heard his way to his bed.

Of course, these were just motions. He was an insomniac by choice. Better to not sleep than get hit with the memories. The living nightmare that plagued his subconscious.

He typically used this time to just lay in bed and calm his thoughts. But this time, he accidentally fell asleep, as it sometimes happens against his indomitable will.

~~~~~~

He woke up the next morning, still before the sun was even a thought, all but swimming in a cold sweat. He stilled his panting and wiped the tearstreaks off of his face before he dragged himself painfully out of bed. He quickly dressed, a pair of black slacks and a white button-up with very small black dots for the pattern. He brushed his silver hair and put it up in a rather pathetic ponytail, not very much longer than a ruler. He quickly cleaned off the blood on his staff from the night before and crammed a muffin down his throat before he left his apartment. He caught a taxi, his dark red satchel full of assignments and papers, and got out at Gotham University. He crammed a 20 dollar bill into the cab driver's hand and headed to the office to check in. He was wordless, his speech not yet engaged for the day. He grabbed a quick cup of coffee from the language department lounge and left quickly for his office, his staff out in front of him for a cane while his sight was turned off. He narrowly avoided colliding with a redheaded teen before going on his merry way.

Said redhead, however, was none other than Barbara Gordon. She turned around to watch him, Professor Kelvin so she'd heard, walk to the end of the hall before entering a classroom. She'd never been in this section of the school, she was just dropping off a friend. But this changed everything. She recognized the staff. Thank god for photographic memory. She sent a quick text to Bruce on the way to her next class: "I think Blindside is a professor at my school. Could be wrong though."

Back at the end of the corridor, he walked into the empty classroom and folded up his staff to store it in his desk. On the back of all chairs in the classroom was a different bad pun written/engraved in Braille. He took a sip of coffee and fidgeted for a second with his ID badge: Keith Kelvin, Language Department. He sighed and pulled out assignments for his next ASL class, which he enabled his sight for to set them on all the desks before he sat down. Seconds later, 2 students came in, one a tall buff nerd with short black hair, and the other a cheerleader-size girl with long brown hair and chocolate skin.

Keith gave the biggest smile he could, which really only translated to what others would perceive as a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth. He enabled his hearing, keeping his eyes open for the illusion, and typed on his Braille laptop while he listened in to more troubling conversations amongst his students.

His station as a professor, professor Keith Kelvin, here served a few purposes. A cover, an actual thing he wanted to do, and a method of picking his targets by eaves-I mean listening to his students. He also encouraged his students to use him as their personal counselor if they needed somebody to vent to. Made his Blindside work much easier.

His day came to an end 3 or 4 hours later, his two Braille classes and 1 ASL class being finished. He headed back to his office for the mandatory office hour he had to provide. He heard a slight knock on his office door, so he turned in his seat and pulled up student grades and such to discuss.

Except, it wasn't a student from one of his classes. In front of him was a teen, clearly troubled by something. He rose an eyebrow at her and switched to speech. "Hello miss, can I help you?" His Irish accent was very thick, but not hard to understand. Immediately following his question, he shut off his speech in favor of his hearing.

She trembled slightly in her nervousness and sat down. The instant she began to speak, Keith got up from his chair and shut his door. He recognized how her breaths and her heartbeat sounded.He sat back down to listen. She began to detail manipulation and abusive control from her father, though specifics were curiously left out. Before she left, Keith asked her for her name. The name he was then given was "Rachel Roth". He went back to his apartment, doing some investigation to track down the Roth name. He got nothing, other than the Rachel Roth from his office. Using his sight to actually see what she looked like, it was obvious she was a bit older than an average college student should be. Roughly 26 maybe? He wasn't sure. Grey skin was a new one, he hadn't seen that before. He took note of the violet hair and the red crystal thing in her forehead. He shrugged. 'If it's important enough, and if it runs in my general motives, I'll kill the guy. But I don't have anything to work off of yet.' He was in mid-investigation still when he heard a loud tap on his window. He rose from his desk and moved into line of sight, only to find Robin looking at him. Keith went solemn.

Keith's relationship with the Bat Family was...complicated, to say the least. He is one of the only people in existence to successfully defeat Batman in hand-to-hand combat, and while Keith and Batman disagree in terms of methods, Keith's strict code of conduct and his combat ability garnered respect from Bats. Unfortunately, that encounter almost killed Keith, due to his supremely fragile body. While Batman respected him, Robin and Batgirl didn't feel the same way. Neither liked him very much, but neither of them knew about his code of conduct.

Keith's code of conduct is this: Are they a criminal? Fuck them up and leave them to cops or Bats. Are they an abuser? Kill them as horrifically as possible.

That was it. He did the same thing Batman did, but with less tech and he had a select category of people that he chose to always kill.

Keith approached the window and raised it, backing away back to his desk. "Robin. Can I help you?" As far as Keith knew, only Batman knew his identity, and Keith and Batman had agreed to keep his identity private even from Robin. At the time, however, Batgirl wasn't in the picture. Keith could guess that she might have found out and proceeded to slip it to Robin.

Robin remained silent but stepped in, leaning on his staff. Keith didn't look at him but let an amused breath out of his nose. "That's a fight you would lose, lad."

Robin proceeded to open his mouth and confirm what Keith figured happened about his identity. "For your crimes of heinous murders, I'm taking you in."

Keith, again, blew hot air out of his nostrils. "You're funny, kid." Keith stood up slowly and let rage course through him again to get him through whatever pain would come from this, and he dashed from his desk and around the corner for his staff. He did a no-hander cartwheel over a staff swing from Dick. With his staff now in hand, Keith twirled his staff expertly between his hand and around his body at a blinding speed for momentum and then sent it heavily towards Dick, who attempted a block with his own staff. Keith's momentum, however, was too much, and Tim's staff dropped out of his hands for a moment from the vibration. That was just enough, however, as Keith spun and used the opposite end of his staff to nail Tim in the face, breaking his nose with the butt-end. Tim stepped back several feet before Keith used his staff to send himself at Robin for a sort of pole-vault kick to the chest that sent Robin into the wall hard. Keith set his staff under Robin's chin menacingly. "If you don't leave, I'm sending you back to Bats in a body cast. Not dead. Just incapable of Robin-ing." Robin, blood trailing down his face, just gave a lopsided grin, much to Keith's confusion.

"I'll leave, but my intention was never to take you in anyway, though I do think you should be. I actually need your help, and I needed to be sure you were Blindside." Dick shifted his head up to stem the blood flowing from his nose. "Ow by the way."

Keith sighed and brought his staff away from Robin's chin with a twirl. Robin didn't lie, he would have heard his heart rate spike if he did. He set his staff back down and absent-mindedly tossed a towel at Robin for the bleeding. "What help do you need from me?"

Without getting long-winded, Robin just asked for help pertaining to Trigon and Raven. Keith rose another eyebrow. "And what exactly would be my motive to help in this?"

Robin sighed. "Well, Trigon has been...influencing Raven, which is a massive understatement. More that he's controlling her." Robin conveniently left out the part where Trigon was a demon.

Keith nodded. "Ok yeah, that is my MO. Where do I go to kill Trigon?" There was a minute and a half following this question of Robin just being very very confused.

He shook his head. "You...you can't. He's a literal demon." He titled his head back and jammed his nose back into position, wincing as he did. "Ow."

Keith mouthed "Oh" to himself. He thought for a second. "Ok. I'll help you. But understand, if you or anyone else attempts to betray me to the cops or feds or whoever, I'm coming for you. You and your whole team. So keep them in line." Keith left his bedroom while unbuttoning his white shirt. "Wait for me on the fire escape, I'll only be a moment." He didn't listen for Robin's movement, he just took off his shirt and yanked his bodysuit out of his closet.

Robin was a step and a half from the window to go outside when he saw Keith's back and smothered his gasp with his hand and his cape upon seeing Keith's back. He left to the fire escape like he'd seen a ghost.

Next time, in The Senses Cycle!

Blindside is officially introduced to the Titans, who are either legal teens, or adults already!