The Night Stalker's Vigilante

One

You shivered, clutching your jacket tighter around your torso. Gotham nights were usually cold, but tonight seemed to be especially so, despite it being springtime. The wind seemed to blow directly onto your bones in your crouched vantage point on a building's roof. Having been on this particular rooftop for a few hours now, you debated retiring for the night. Your research led you to believe that a certain group of local vigilantes would be swinging by this part of the city, but apparently not.

Sighing, you adjusted your grip on your camera. The night had turned out to be a bust, which, unfortunately, you were used to. But you didn't want to leave empty-handed, so to speak. With a grunt you stood, knees cracking from the change in position.

The horizon glowed from the emitted light pollution, throwing the dark buildings in stark contrast, the moon and stars twinkling in the sky. Adjusting your stance, you reached up with your camera, placed your eye in the viewfinder, and took the shot. Gotham may have many problems, but it was home, and you loved taking pictures of her.

A barely audible thwip caused you to jerk away from your camera and drop back into a crouch, cursing silently. You needed to have more faith in yourself and your research capabilities, it seemed. Turning towards the noise, your eyes widened as you registered the three figures that had perched on the edge of the building across from you.

The Red Hood and Red Robin were no surprise, they had been rumored to have spent a lot of time in this area for the past few days. Busting a trafficking scheme or something of the sort. But it was the last person that caused your shock.

There Nightwing was, squatting next to his fellow vigilantes, face in profile and smile resting upon it. He hadn't been seen or heard of since the destruction of Bludhaven two months ago, and many were worried that he had been one of the many casualties of the raze.

Quickly raising your camera, you took the shot, quietly thanking every god that you knew that you had recently bought a silent camera. Your usual go-to camera that you used for your job was higher quality, with better resolution, but it had a very audible click and shutter sound every time you took a photo. You loved the thing to bits, but it had put you in a few precarious situations before when you had stalked the local nightlife and they heard the little click.

You had over a decade of experience photographing this particular kind of nightlife, starting on a whim in middle school after witnessing Batman and Robin fly across the rooftops outside of your apartment window. A few years into your hobby, around the time you started high school, you decided to post your pictures on a blog you made, under the username "night_stalker" where you quickly became a known user in the Gotham community. Weekly updates kept your followers sated and made sure that even if you didn't go out every night, you still had something to post.

You had favorite subjects to photograph of course, and the top one was the first Robin, or Nightwing now. Stalking, for lack of a better term, the vigilantes caused you to get a sense of their personalities. Batman was stoic and caring, always taking hits that Robin would have taken otherwise. The first Robin had anger issues and a strong sense of justice, downing criminals with an almost personal vengeance. The second Robin was snarky and kind, always taking the time to reassure the victims of a crime that they were alright. When he died, you made an entire post dedicated just to him with some of his best pictures during his time as Robin. (You had a theory, though, that he was somehow actually alive and the Red Hood, but couldn't prove it as you could with Nightwing.) The third Robin was calculated and quick, subduing criminals before they even knew he was there. The fourth(?) Robin was a blonde girl, active for only around a week, and you only managed to get two pictures of her before she disappeared. And, finally, the current Robin was serious and dedicated. He was colder at the beginning when he was first active with Nightwing as Batman (obvious to you because of the stalking), but he had warmed up considerably since then, leaving cirminals less wounded, and even cracking jokes a few times.