Who: Jason, Gotham nightlife, +OPEN Where: Gotham When: 5/15 What: New gear, new lease on life, same Gotham - right?
There was something in the air.
Maybe a non-native would have been fooled - Jason was pretty damn sure a tourist would have been. But a tourist never would have gotten to this point, leaning comfortably against one of the gargoyles that crowned many of Gotham's rooftops. There were times when he wondered if the city had been created to be a vigilante playground, the way they gave shelter to anyone wanting to run across the roofs and plausible deniability to anyone crouched among their number.
He knew better; the city had been created to live, to devour her children if she needed to. The lights of the buildings stretched out beneath him, and the streets and alleys were shadows that swallowed the hope of the light. Traffic was almost musical in the background, but underfoot was the thump of feet and bodies on the pavement, every so often the crack of a gun off in the distance.
He should be there; after so long with enforced idleness, Jason could feel his skin itch, feel the hunger inside him for action, the will to fight every one of those shadows until they bled raw. And he would, as he had for the last while, patrolling the mean residential neighborhood he called home and sweeping out to the surrounding city, hunting down trouble.
But there was a hint of something in the air, something as edgy as he was, but more cautious, slick with fear. Criminals looked over their shoulders, kept to their turf, challenged those that they didn't recognize and left people hurting in their wake. Yeah, maybe someone who didn't know Gotham would be fooled, but he did.
This was what Gotham looked like when people were just starting to be scared, when the underworld caught the shadow of a bigger shark sliding through the water above; they didn't hunker down, exactly, not when there was always pieces to be had from the kills, but they sure as hell didn't want the shark to gobble them up. So they defended their territory, and waited to see what happened next.
It could have been anyone. But he had been chasing the scent of HYDRA for six months now, and as the old man liked to say, there were no coincidences, not with these kinds of things. There just wasn't much he could do about the cold trail right now.
Except fight. Good thing he happened to be rather good at it.
Jason dropped off the ledge, a fast descent, and landed feet-first in the middle of a back-alley scuffle, and threw himself into problems that he could solve.