Jason doesn't always... mesh, with the Bat's vision for Gotham City. It's not that he disagrees with it completely, he just sees where it's... flawed. Probably because Bruce spends so much time above the city rather than in it. But Jason? He's been in it. He's been deep in the worst of Gotham, lived it, in a way that Bruce Wayne just can't ever fully understand. So while the Dark Knight tends to focus on the 'big problems' - the supervillains, the big fish, as it were - Red Hood has always tried a bit more to be in it. To show the people Gotham's forgotten that he's one of them, he's here for them.

It's why the Bowery is his turf. He'll poke around the Narrows and the East End, too - the other run-down, underserved neighborhoods of Gotham that nobody else is looking out for - but the Bowery is the worst, and the Bowery is his. He was born there, after all.

And sure, it's a rough neighborhood to say the least. Plenty of thugs, gangs. Drug deals, muggings, black market crap left and right - Gotham's politicians gave up on this place long ago, so it's ripe for all sorts of scum to move in. All the more reason for Red Hood to make this his turf. This place is dangerous for its citizens to just exist in? Well he's gonna make it dangerous for the people who make it dangerous.

Which is what he's been up to tonight. He doesn't like the term 'cleaning up the streets', because it suggests that everything he deals with down here is trash. And sure, he's taken out plenty of trash. But sometimes? Sometimes the job is... well. More than that.

Sometimes the job is keeping your eyes open, so you can spot the little figure huddled in a side alley digging through a dumpster just hoping to find some way to ward off the incoming winter chill. Jason's not immune to the irony, really. Trash out there on the streets; while the treasures are stuck digging through dumpsters.

"Hey. Kid." He keeps his steps light, and his voice as calming as it gets. "You can't be out here. Let me get you somewhere safe."