Not, thought one sorely exhausted and also just regular sore Barbara Gordon, that Gotham city had ever been anywhere near approaching quiet. But it was decidedly more crowded nowadays than when she'd been a kid.

Some of it -- and she made careful efforts not to waste too much time imagining how much -- was Harvey Dent and his "New Gotham Now" campaign. The guy had shot through the ranks like a rocket ship just a little too quickly for Babs not to be on edge. Both her father and Bruce remained infuriatingly optimistically taciturn about him in their own ways. It was the kind of tight-lipped hopefulness that had always indicated there was some file stored away on some computer (or, in her father's cased, in a locked file cabinet somewhere in the evidence catacombs of GCPD) she just hadn't found yet, and frankly, there were other things on her mind just now. Bruce was paranoid enough for all three of them, and if anyone could smell something less-than-pristine on Harvey Dent, it was Bruce. Or rather it was Bruce's late-night alter ego, but that was neither here nor there.

In any case, Dent made for pretty changes all across the surface of Gotham: new parks every few blocks, a pristine City Mall along the harbor, complete with a waterside Ferris wheel themed in 'Gothic Lisa Frank' or something like it; and more frozen yogurt boutiques than could possibly be necessary in any city anywhere. Babs could blame her current predicament on those cosmetic changes in more than one way.

Under the surface, though, Gotham roiled just as dark and muddy as ever. Maybe moreso, if only because every tiny dent Harvey buffed away made the damage beneath seem just a little more insidious. Babs couldn't tie it to anything, not yet. But research had always been her favorite part of the game, even before she was back out and able to do it on her own again.

She was, just now, crouched atop one of those new frozen yogurt stands, the third to pop up in as many months by her count, called Princess Creamery, which Babs thought was just plain creepy, but whatever. This one, however, unlike the others, seemed to be missing a business license number, and the woman who was renting it shared a name with a widow who'd conveniently died at the Gotham City Retirement Home just three weeks ago.

Babs had been camped out at the equally pristine cafe across the street for the better part of the day, watched until the trio of teenagers behind the counter locked up and went home...and then watched another hour when a woman with dark brown curls dangling into her face stumbled out of a cab, looking flustered and anxious. She looked both ways across the empty street, darted for the front door, unlocked it, and disappeared inside. Squinting, Babs could only half see her rush to the counter -- in the dark, no lights on, duck behind it for a few minutes, then reappear, her face hidden behind dark curls.

The woman reemerged a few minutes later, her head down, hopped in the waiting cab, and disappeared. Bab's had only glimpsed the cab's plate for a second, but it had been enough. She still had that much, thank God.

She was running her fourth search on the plates wondering if maybe she'd been mistaken about the third number, and about everything, when finally, at twenty minutes til 2 AM, someone showed up.

Just not who she'd been expecting. Then again, the city had gotten crowded.

It was the shattering glass that caught her attention, something she'd have berated herself for if she had the time. For the moment, she could only curse under her breath and dart to the edge of the roof to peer over the edge. One window had been blown out -- out? -- and a thick fog followed after.

Babs held her breath on instinct, feeling her eyes start to burn and water painfully not a moment later. Her hands twitched to her belt, searching for the purifier there. It'd take a few minutes to clear the place out, but with a gas that potent, there was no chance anyone was still inside, which likely meant --

Go, Barbara.

Strange, how her inner monologue still spoke with Bruce's words in her father's voice. She only half considered it as she clasped a rebreather over her mouth and nose with one hand -- she almost definitely wouldn't go blind any time soon, right? -- and angled herself up over the roof edge and through the window with the other.

She was still trying to figure out why the window was broken if the front door had really been unlocked when she realized she could hear a quietly insistent beeping over the sound of her own breathing.

Barbara swallowed a groan. She was definitely getting too old for this.