"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

A certain Jonathan Crane found himself irritated by many things, and this entire night belonged on that list.

It hadn't been all bad, he'd always wanted to see that fool's face twisted with absolute, unending terror, but without the extra support he'd have to set back his plans at least a month. The longer he waited, the more he risked the Bat finding his locations and destroying his work. And that couldn't happen, not this time. His pride still stung from the last failure.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. Thinking about the Batman brought sour feelings which he didn't need right now. Tomorrow, or perhaps even tonight, he could don his mask and bathe an unwitting victim in pure fear to purge his own rotten mood.

Tonight. He'd do it tonight, but that required reaching his apartment in a timely fashion.

It wasn't more than a half hour's walk from here. He cursed himself for not driving back, but the (stolen) car had been in such bad shape already that he doubted if it could handle any more driving, and he hadn't fancied stealing another. This was a good suit, he hadn't worn it with the intention of getting car stink on it.

The Narrows were so filthy that his suit was bound to get dirty anyway. He despised being surrounded by so many pathetic sheep who contented themselves with cheap pleasure and living conditions fit for livestock, but it was a necessary evil. Here, he could "recruit" test subjects without any complaints, and no one would care about his experiments. It helped that he had so many people paid off.

Though, even more avoided squealing for fear of his wrath.

He paused beneath the yellowed glare of a streetlamp. Even without his costume, he shadow stretched across the road like a horribly tall creature reaching for a victim. Whether or not he was Scarecrow, shadows always did amazing things to someone's mind. One would see the shadow before the man and already assume that a monstrous being was almost upon them.

It wasn't wrong. He was a monstrous being and by the time you glimpsed the Scarecrow's shadow, it was already too late.

As much as he berated Nygma for having an ego, his own was larger than the moon. Reminiscing about the faces right before their hearts stopped from terror brought a crooked smile to his lips. People were such interesting packages. They had the oddest, most irrational fears.

Although the fear of himself, which they all shared, was perhaps the most rational fear of all.

He stepped into a darkened alley, not in the least bit worried about what might had been lurking within. No one, no matter how strong or brave, was immune to his fear toxin. Thugs had tried before to mug him. The results had been... well. There was a good reason petty criminals avoided him.

A police car came racing down the road. He leaned closer to the wall, wary of anything that involved those pigs. It had different prey, however, and the police inside wouldn't had noticed him even if he danced in the middle of a spotlight. Two more followed, but by that time he'd lost his caution and regarded the passing cars with scorn.

If he'd been paying slightly more attention to his surroundings rather than assuming himself to be the lord of fear and everything around him, he might had noticed the adjacent building's air conditioning ducts which gave a perfect perch to anyone observing him. Or he might had heard the metallic thumps that sounded at the same time as the sirens. But nothing, nothing, hunted Jonathan Crane.

He only turned around when he felt the weight of eyes and something wrong behind him. He caught the briefest glimpse of an incredibly ugly mask before his head exploded in pain and blackness enveloped him.

A figure on a rooftop observed a resting beetle with great interest. From this height she would splat like a bug on the concrete below, yet she continued to dangle her feet like nothing was amiss. She clicked at the beetle, the inhuman sound surprisingly loud beneath her hideous mask, but it didn't reply. They rarely answered her, not like the others. This one didn't know her yet.

Looking from a distance or standing at her side, nothing distinguished her as a she or even human; it wouldn't be entirely wrong to assume that a monstrous insect lay beneath her garments, if one heard the sounds coming from her mouth. No one could see her anyway, unless they looked up, but the people never looked up. She knew they never looked up because she had stalked them from above many times before and they never, ever saw her.

Her stomach rumbled. She hadn't eaten since... two nights ago? She could survive for a longer time than most without food but that didn't mean that she enjoyed it. Last night her scavenging had been cut short when she saw the bat leaving a vehicle near her lair.

The bat had a car. The thought of his increased mobility terrified her to the core.

She ran her tongue over the sharpened points of her teeth, imagining the warmth of a fresh kill against her palette. The thoughts of human prepared meals came to mind as well. They smelled delicious when the scents drifted from inside their homes and restaurants, but she couldn't have that. Things like her weren't allowed to feast on their goods. The scraps she stole while they slept were what she had to content herself with, apart from what she hunted.

Thinking about food did nothing to bring it. She shook the thoughts from her head and began climbing down the fire escape to see if she could actually eat that night. Near the bottom she paused and stared inside the apartment where two people, facing away from her, sat watching television. The female's arm wrapped around the male's shoulders and they both leaned into one another slightly. A pang of jealousy struck her.

She clicked irritably and finished her descent. A few hisses directed at rats caused them to scurry away as fast as they could. She had no sympathy for the tiny beasts and always felt a little offended by their presence. Sometimes she would hunt them down and gift their hideous bodies to the maggots, but tonight she needed a different hunt.

Well, there were a few things she needed to hunt for, but first came food.

How did one even find his kind of work? He told her that she could find people who would pay handsomely for her particular talents in this city, but how was she supposed to find them? Though there were colonies apart from the masses, the gangs and mobs and such, it wasn't like she could just walk into their nests and announce herself.

Money was pointless, anyway. She couldn't waltz into a store to spend it even if she wanted to.

Usually there were vagrants and criminals walking the streets at night, unaware of the predator stalking them, but tonight there were none. She couldn't smell so much as a passed out drunk. It wouldn't kill her to miss any prey tonight, but she was almost out of food at her hideout and needed to feed the others before herself. Not every bug accepted rotten meals. It would be almost kinder some days to force them outside to hunt for themselves, but she couldn't bear to part from any of her darlings.

Inhuman or not, she had a heart and it would break quite easily.

It took a half hour of mindless wandering before she decided that she was wasting her time. Eyeing an air conditioning duct which provided a ledge a good thirty feet off the ground, she scrambled to the top of a dumpster and leapt. A lower horizontal bit of the duct, just reachable from the top of the dumpster, held her weight easily. The other pipes running across the building and her enjoyment of climbing made it a simple task to reach the higher ledge.

While it wasn't quite the top of the building, her new perch gave her both a hiding spot and a position where she could easily watch the alley for a potential meal. She reckoned she could even carry the prey a few blocks to her lair to be uninterrupted. The lack of color on her clothing made her seem more like a shadow than a living creature, perfect for blending into her hiding spot.

Crouching with her arms between her legs and gloved hands flat on the metal perch, she waited. When she stood still, she really stood still. Nothing on her twitched or fidgeted. Not even the gentle rise and fall of her breathing chest could be seen. She could wait for hours, perhaps as long as days, in this position. She had been designed to do so, after all.

It took over an hour before she sensed movement beyond the shaking of leaves in a breeze. A lone human came within her sight. Male, she thought, but she couldn't be too sure until he came closer. The way he carried himself reminded her of someone who hadn't the slightest fear of a predator, which suited her purposes just fine. As he came almost within her range, she considered her options. Leaping on the ground from thirty feet in the air, even with a fleshy human to break her fall, didn't quite appeal to her. On the other hand, dropping back down on the other lengths of pipe and ducts quickly enough to catch him could alert him to her presence.

A siren screeching past them came to her rescue. The figure darted away from the sudden red and blue lights, pressing himself against the side of the building. She took the opportunity to reach the ground again, a couple more passing police cars both covering her noise and distracting the prey. While he studied the street the cars had blazed past, she moved into position behind him and unstrapped a crowbar from her side.

And the moment he turned around, the weapon collided with his head with a savage thunk and he collapsed before her.

This is a rather short chapter, I'm aware. I'm mostly testing the waters, but I guarantee that I'll post at least a couple more chapters since this is barely even a taste of the main character.