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[i]"How's Gotham?"[/i]

It was a pivot. A desperate attempt to change the subject, because Jessica didn't like where the subject was headed. [i]You weren't supposed to catch feelings like this, Jessica.[/i] It wasn't in the plan. And it didn't particularly make sense. Jessica was off to South America over the break, while Barbara Gordon returned home to Gotham City. No one really understood it back in Palo Alto, but it didn't matter what they understood. If there was one thing Babs had become amazing at, it was keeping her emotional distance while making others feel as if she was emotionally right there beside them. She'd been doing it for longer than she could remember. At times she'd even done it with her own father, Batgirl getting the better of her.

"Oh," She paused, tilting her head as she watched the penthouse from a few streets away, her eyes glued to the high powered viewer, "it's going okay. You know, pretty boring all things considered."

[i]"How's your dad?"[/i]

She frowned. "Preoccupied and stressed as always." [i]Also missing and definitely in trouble.[/i] She left that part out.

Jessica started saying something; some mindless keep the conversation going longer than required small talk that Babs endured because she was too nice to brush the girl off. At least, until she heard the sound she heard too many times to ever miss in Gotham City: gunshots. [b]Bang. Bang. Bang...Bangbangbang...bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bangbangbang.[/b] Her mind replayed it immediately, to double check the mental math: fifteen shots. All the same caliber. It sounded like someone emptying a clip into an entire room, or someone panicking and emptying an entire clip into one or two people because emotion got the better of them. Batgirl dropped the viewer and pressed her gloved hand up to her ear. "Yeah, Jess, I gotta go. Sorry, dad calling me."

Lies that sounded so natural, lies that came too easy. Batgirl always made Barbara Gordon's life easier, and yet more complicated, in the same breath. It was easier to lie, but it complicated life. Live a double life long enough, and the wrong behaviors became easier and easier. She imagined it was the exact same for behaviors of the worst kind. Do it for reasons you considered "right", and they got easier and easier over time. Her run-in with Poison Ivy the night before seemed to reinforce that. Or the corrupt cops she had been watching the day before.

Or anything Jason Todd ever did since his return from death. Not that Jason was really THAT bad anymore. She hoped. 

Thoughts silenced as she moved towards the edge of the rooftop, facing the direction the sound of the shots came from. Thoughts silenced, and her mind emptied, as she did nothing more than watch and listen. The echoes of a fire escape rose above the other endless layers of night time Gotham City sounds, the tiniest blur of motion in the edge of her vision, before her head turned and her cowl zoomed in with a few taps just behind her ear. The figure tripped, moving faster than he ought to be, moving faster than his mind could keep up with. Where was the gun? Probably still on him? 

The muffled sound of her grappler [i]popped[/i] into the night air, and she began to glide, drifting above the busy Gotham avenue alive with light and cars and pedestrians, zeroed in on her target. Legs stiffened, back arched, head "steering" with slight tilts this way and that, arms controlling pitch with little adjustments as she went. Her upper back arched up to increase air resistance, to slow her, as she watched the man ditching the mask peel off the main avenue into a side street, a little alley between apartment blocks. Her landing on one of the apartment building roof tops was flawless, practiced, and silent. Batgirl was no more than a shadow amongst shadows as she peeked over the edge, and narrowed her eyes. 

The man bent at the waist, breathing heavily, his pulse high. He probably had the gun still on him. Probably in the satchel. It wasn't in his hands, though, and that meant she could react faster than he'd be able to. A simple hop, and her world became a dance of gravity and her cape's resistance, the unlit windows and empty fire escapes of the buildings looming over the alley below blurring by as she touched booted feet onto the ground, a stone's throw behind the man bent at the waist and trying to collect himself--from the sound of his heavy breathing. The cowl noted the blood on his body, and the gun powder on his hands.

Her head tilted, her tone turned callow, playful. "Really bad party, I guess?" When he froze at the sound, she only smiled a razor thin smile. "Be smart here, guy. Turn around slowly, and show me your hands--while you can still lift your hands above your shoulders." The threat was a little more than implied. 

[@Americore]