not deaths bitch | jason todd

[ xxi ]

[one week later]

[twenty-one: the flaming man]

DICK GRAYSON WAS PUZZLED, he had looked over the video recording from the police more times than he could count. All his years of police work and time living a double-life could barely prepare him for that case.

The surveillance showed a typical Gotham day but one man was about to stick out like a sore thumb. The man would approach the Gotham City Bank. He would walk in. He would then pull out a gun and once everyone was huddled in a corner he lit himself on fire. Although, it wasn't a suicide plan but a tactic.

Gotham City bank was caught on fire, everyone inside dying and in a matter of minutes he would leave with a bag filled with close to a billion dollars. The footage would end with the bank blowing up, hitting pedestrians and cars with debris.

Dick just couldn't figure out who the flaming man was. He ran his face through the bat cave's facial recognition but nothing came it. It was like flaming man didn't exist, he had no identify. This was something he'd never experience.

With all the wild things he'd seen, it wouldn't be a stretch to believe he could be an alien. Hours of looking at it wasn't going to change the fact that they had no leads because the mystery man had figured out to burn the rest of the camera's along Gotham.

He switched the screen to something else, a map of Gotham appeared with a blinking light on a motel in north Gotham. It hadn't moved for the last three days, Dick hated tracking his friends but they couldn't be trusted now.

After all those years together, he didn't expect it from Tasi, after her grand escape to California had supposedly "changed her." Jason, he thought, he was definitely capable of this. From the beginning he was a rule breaker, always finding a way to make their work more difficult.

"Why now?" He asked himself, he was thinking about both cases in hand. The case of the flaming man and the case of Jason and Anastasia. "After all those years, why come out now?" He was referring to Jason, who had managed to hide for all those years. Then he thought of Tasi, who'd somehow done the same, faking her death, removing any record of herself from the world in order to start over.

That's when it hit him, Dick smiled and fell back into his car. He spun around praising his idea but his amusement ended once he realized one thing. He would have to get Bruce on board with the plan.