Fingers McCabe and her lookout Buddy weren't actually on the job tonight; having only arrived in town the day before, they were still getting a feel for the lay of the land, as it were. They were up on the rooftop of one of the buildings that overlooked the Midtown South branch of Gotham Trust just to have a look at the sightlines - it couldn't even properly be called casing the joint. Sort of pre-pre-casing it.

Fingers and Buddy had heard that New Gotham wasn't a place for enterprising criminals to jump in with both feet, as it were, anyway. Too many costumes around for that - though, having come from New Avalon, they were both used to that. That was one of the reasons they'd left Spheretown in the first place. When even a legendary security wizard like Boyd Kavanagh hung up his skeleton keys, the smarter regular operators like Fingers and Buddy knew the place was too hot for the likes of them. On the other hand, compared to the Titans, how tough could this place's costumes be? Most of them didn't even have superpowers, from what Fingers had heard.

"Do you hear that?" Buddy asked.

"No," Fingers replied, still engrossed in taking a close look at the facade of the bank across the street. "What?"

"Sounds like - " Buddy said, but before he could finish, a dark shape topped with a brilliant, fizzing red light loomed out of the night and zoomed past, flying just above rooftop level over the street.

"Heads up!" this bizarre figure - hunched back, leathery wings, a slender girl-shape above, all cast in weird, hellish relief by the sputtering red glow - called gaily to them, and then it was gone. A moment later another winged form, this one bigger and still more monstrous, swept past with a blast of slipstream and a wave of some oppressive, musty but unidentifiable smell. Buddy and Fingers coughed and staggered back from the edge of the roof, waving the miasma away with both hands.

There was a brief and startled silence while the two reflected on what they'd just seen.

"Buddy?" said Fingers.

"Yeh?" Buddy replied.

"Did you just see what I just saw?"

"I'm not sure. Did you just see a girl in a cape with a highway flare in her hand, ridin' on the back of a giant bat wearin' a tactical harness and combat boots, both of 'em bein' chased by a moth the size of a Buick? 'Cause that's what I just saw."

"... God Almighty, what do they put in the water in this town?"

Fingers McCabe and Buddy returned to New Avalon on the 11:45 Federated Galactic flight out of Thomas Wayne International that night.

"Welcome to Gotham" - a Future Imperfect Micro-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins
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© 2012 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited