The Gotham night was a thick, suffocating blanket of grime and neon, a symphony of distant sirens and the low, constant hum of decay. It was a language Jason Todd spoke fluently. He was a ghost in its grammar, a shadow moving with a predator's economy through its syntax of fire escapes and gargoyle-studded rooftops.

Below, the city was a wound, and these men—leaders of a new crew stupid enough to peddle fear on his turf—were the infection. He’d been tracking their progress for weeks, a patient hunter studying the patterns of prey too arrogant to know they were being hunted. His boots made no sound on the rain-slicked gravel of the rooftop ledge. Each leap across the yawning chasms between buildings was a calculated risk, a silent promise of violence carried on the wind. He used the city's own darkness as a weapon, melting into the deep, impenetrable blacks that the feeble streetlights could never hope to conquer.

He was a specter woven from vengeance and leather, his breath a faint plume in the chill air, his every sense tuned to the scene unfolding three stories below. They were laughing, slapping backs over a deal well made, their voices carrying up in arrogant, drunken bursts. They felt safe. They felt powerful. They were idiots.

A cold, grim focus settled over him, ironing out any lingering emotion, any trace of the man beneath the mask. There was only the mission. The equation. Three targets. One exit strategy.

He moved to the perfect vantage point, a snipers nest of shadows. The world narrowed to the crosshair of his focus. The metallic scent of impending rain mixed with the oil of his custom pistol as he drew it. The weight was a comfort, a promise. He cycled through the targets, a final assessment. The leader, a brutish man with a cruel laugh, was the priority. The others were footnotes.

He raised the weapon, the barrel a black hole of finality against the garish glow of a discount store sign. The red dot of the laser sight was invisible to them, a secret he held. It found its home, painting a tiny, fatal dot on the temple of the man who thought he owned these streets.

A stillness descended, profound and absolute. The chatter below faded into a dull buzz. There was only the pressure of his finger on the trigger, the steady, metronomic beat of his own heart, and the target.

In the silence of his own mind, the thought was a cold, hard certainty, devoid of triumph, filled only with a grim, necessary purpose.

He is going to clean these streets.