DANGEROUS ⇛ Jason Todd [ currently on hiatus ]

1.

"Goodnight, Mads!" I yell, smiling slightly at the old lady as I walk through the doors of the diner I've been working at for almost six months. It was a cute little place; brightly colored and always a great place to spend time with friends. Which isn't the norm for a city like Gotham. Madison's Diner may have been an ideal place to go on a Friday night with family if it weren't for it's poor location.

The diner is smack bang in the middle of the worst part of the city, with drug lords and criminals littering almost every nook and cranny of the streets. I had talked to Mads - the kind old woman who owns the diner, about this but she had just waved a hand at me saying that nothing would ever happen to someone her age and that if I ever found myself in trouble to just use the can of pepper spray that she had supplied me with. We both know that it's necessary for a girl my age to carry around a can of pepper spray. Especially in this city.

I pull my dark jacket tight around my body, shivering due to the breeze that passes through the street as I start my journey home. On any other day I'd be leaving from work at an earlier time and in my car, but because some stupid ass underage boys had decided to wreck my car, it's currently unusable. I sigh, glancing down at the time on my phone. 3:30 am. It's not smart of me to walk back to my apartment so late at night, but what other choice do I have? I barely have any friends here to give me a lift, seeing as I just recently moved to Gotham City and the friends that I do have would be fast asleep by now.

Every little noise or movement makes me jump, speeding up my pace as I round a corner. It doesn't really help that the dark terrifies me as it is and I've never actually had to walk home this late. Parties, clubs and staying out late has never really been my sort of thing. I'd rather stay in my apartment eating pizza and watching Supernatural.

My eyes catch sight of a man atop a rooftop, his face covered by some sort of helmet or mask type of thing, causing my eyes to grow wide. I'd heard of the masked vigilantes that apparently protect the residents of Gotham, but I'd never actually come to terms with how vigilantes work. I mean, coming from a place like Central City, I'm no stranger to metahuman's, but from the scattered information that I've received the vigilantes seem to work differently here.

Avoiding looking at the man, I keep my eyes trained on the ground as I walk down the street. I wince as my shoulder bumps into the pole of a street lamp, the slight pain becoming lesser as I near my home.

The sudden noise of grunts and the sound of a body colliding with the floor causes me to instinctively turn around, only steps away from the apartment building, my eyes once again widening. The same man from the top of the building has another person pinned to the ground, throwing various punches at his face - also receiving multiple himself. His mask, now more visible that he's under the light of a street lamp, is a hard red helmet, his arm and abdomen muscle's tensing as he fights. He wasn't dressed in any sort of special costume as I had expected one of the so called 'Gotham Heroes' to be attired in. He's dressed in a grey-almost-black armor like fabric that covers the upper half of his muscular body with a red bat symbol on his chest. He also wears the same color leather-like pants with guns strapped to his waist and a leather jacket is thrown over the ensemble. The guy pinned to the floor thrusts his arm up, driving a knife straight into the man with the red hood's stomach causing him to falter slightly, giving the other guy a chance to fight back.

Cringing at the sight in front of me, I swiftly turn back and race into the building my apartment is in as calmly as I possibly could. I send a rushed smile to the lady who works at the reception, rushing into the elevator that will take me to the seventh floor. I fiddle with my fingers, a habit I have found tends to relax me when my anxiety kicks in. Not that it was kicking in now or anything, because it isn't.