Gotham: Panic Attack

Trail Cam

I sit on my bed, waiting for the inevitable turn to happen like a werewolf just sat there, watching the full moon rising.
These people need fixing. This city is festering and I know just how to clean it. Metaphorical bleach - meet metaphorical bloodstain.

Unlike a wolf, there's no bloodshed involved in this transformation - just a change of mindset; and of clothes.
I kick a piece of carpet aside and reveal a trapdoor that I built into this floor myself. I jam my nails underneath the splintery wood, and smile with pain as I wrench the infernal birch panel off the floor.

Beneath it is a small pile of white clothes, a cloak and a bleached white leather mask.

Two minutes later, the intoxicatingly clean smell of the leather is everywhere all over my face, and my vision is out of the concealed eyeholes of the featureless mask. The relative warmth of a perfect white jacket covers my prickly flesh, and I finally drag the cloak over my shoulders and step coldly out of the window onto my rooftop.

What's it like to a bat? Maybe something like this.

I sprint and leap across the rooftops, my boots landing silenced steps on each individual tile - not knocking a single one off their consecutive perches, and taking 30 seconds to survey my environment every so often.
I know that this lifestyle may seem to be something special to you, but this rooftop existence isn't uncommon amongst street kids.

Last month there was some kind of a murder - the police bloody loved it, and so did the little urchin that I've nicknamed Cat. I've seen her jumping around in the urban canopy occasionally, like a cat, obviously.

I realise that I've stopped, and am perched on the gutter-rail of a cathedral. Blackfire Cathedral - apparently not at all suspicious.

However, something that even I can tell is exceedingly unusual is the person dressed as a clown stood on another rooftop on the horizon. He's wearing a perfect white mask, and has long, scarlet red dreadlocked hair. His body is insanely thin. Police sirens start to flicker their noxious voices up from the streets beneath me, and my 'something's wrong' sense tingles.

I stand and stare at the rag-doll looking man for a second - and then start sprinting across the roofs toward him. He instantly sees this through his emotionless doll mask and then throws himself off the rooftops with a balletic twirl.

'Shit.' My words stab out of the mask like a bladed tongue as I lose sight of the bizarre figure. The sirens wailing gets louder like a chorus of ungodly spirits, and a shiver courses down my spine.

I follow the sirens through the rooftop labyrinth, leaping and bounding across each individual ledge and catapulting myself over spires and castellations. The cold morning air flies past me like a swarm of hawks and my white cloak billows behind my like a trail of cloud.

I jump down onto the streets like a big cat and land in front of a police-cars course. 'Damn.' I curse before jumping over the moving vehicle and landing on the pavement. I duck into an alleyway to prevent them from investigating the ghostly figure that just leapt over their car any more than they needed to.

The sirens begin to fade as the cars round the corner and continue to roar around the streets of Gotham. If that Ragdoll guy is anything like I imagine him to be, the cops have no hope of catching the bugger.