InsaneJournal

Who: Danny Ketch and Jessica Drew.
What: Two superheroes are bored on patrol.
When: Backdated to before everybody looked like the Master.
Where: Random rooftop?
Warnings: Probably not.

The Ghost Rider’s route usually took him along rooftops. Initially Danny’s route hadn’t, but with a great deal of practice and only a few near-mishaps, he’d learned to ride the rooftops well enough on his own. It wasn’t without risks. The Ghost Rider was difficult in the extreme to harm. Danny Ketch was flesh and blood and very squishy, so a fall from the rooftops he rode would end in one flattened human. Danny was pretty sure the Rider would be able to come out before he hit ground, which made things a little less worrisome, but he was only pretty sure. Maybe about ninety-eight percent sure. There was that two percent that left him in doubt. Not enough doubt to avoid doing it, though. It wasn’t that he was still doing his broody, questioning life thing. Andrea and Buffy had talked him out of that awhile ago, and besides. Danny had friends and a girlfriend, and he and Noble…well, they weren’t friends, but they coexisted well enough. Sure, he still sort of wished the whole thing hadn’t come to him, but it had. The ship had sailed on that one. No use being whiny about it anymore.

The way patrol usually worked for him was a little different than it usually worked for superheroes. Most of them got into costume first and then went out to patrol, or at least that’s what he’d been able to figure out. For him it was different. He didn’t really have a costume, and most of his power was reliant on being in another form, with another personality. He was getting closer to triggering the change at will, and had even managed to partially set off a spark of hellflame in his hand the other day, but it had drained him greatly and left him with a headache. Still, it was progress. It meant that some day, he would be able to control the change. Maybe he would never have control over the form of the Rider, but things would be a great deal easier if he could trigger the change at will.

This whole costume issue, for instance. Danny didn’t really have one. What was the point? It would just change when the Ghost Rider surfaced. Still, he had to make sure his face was masked, and he at least had to be sure he wasn’t immediately recognizable by people that didn’t know him. He’d found a way around that by buying a dark helmet with a tinted visor, and a different jacket that he wore specifically when patrolling. It was a long dark trench coat, the kind of thing he’d never actually wear in his personal life regardless of what current Ghost Rider comics seemed to say. It did cut a decently dramatic figure as it billowed behind his bike. That might have been intentional, but Danny would never admit to it.

So far, tonight was dull. Really dull. Even in the bad parts of town! This was definitely not like New York City. Not a night went by that Danny wouldn’t find some crime heinous enough to call to the Spirit of Vengeance. Here, he could go nights without finding anything. To this day, Danny couldn’t really tell which the Rider liked more, being busy or dull. He knew Noble took some pleasure in the vengeance he reaped, but at the same time, he also knew Noble wasn’t really a bad guy. It was hard to decide.

One other thing he’d learned about superheroes? They always had food hidden somewhere. Patrolling was exhausting work. Even on nights when he didn’t find anything, Danny found himself tired and hungry by the end of it. For awhile, he’d relied on early bird specials to make due, but that just really wasn’t cutting it these days. So instead he made sandwiches and brought bottled water. Tonight it was roast beef and water. He was lucky, in that there was a storage compartment on the bike where he could keep stuff. He kept it clean and had discovered it was an excellent place to keep the food. Lately he’d begun making more than just one sandwich and bringing more than one bottled water, in case he ran into Jess during one of his patrols. He was thoughtful like that. Plus he enjoyed seeing her in her costume, because as nice a boy as he was he was still a guy and still had functioning eyes. Therefore it was a usual enough occurrence that the food rarely went to waste.

Case in point. As he scanned the nearby rooftops for the optimal jump point, he spotted her on a nearby rooftop, one he could reach easily enough. Chuckling a little under the helmet, he revved the engines, eternally thankful that people had a tendency to never bother looking up, and tore off toward the opposing rooftop. Executing a jump that would have made this unknown, stunt cyclist older brother of his jealous, he nailed the landing and rode to about the center of the roof, smirking under the helmet. Danny, showing off? Never.

Composing himself, he flipped up the visor – much safer than taking off the helmet when people could still be watching – and lifted his eyebrows at her as he applied the kickstand and climbed off the bike. “Please tell me you’ve had more luck than I have tonight.” A tiny little part of Danny felt like maybe this calm was a bad sign. The calm before the storm or whatever. He was ignoring it for the moment, really hoping he was wrong.