And Red All Over
It had been one week and three days since Bruce Wayne and his fancy team of lawyers had gotten Jonah Hex exonerated of all charges in the shooting death of some guy who had been trying to wipe out the participants of a cancer walk, as well as the shooting deaths of several mutant gang members before that in downtown Gotham City.
For someone who had only been in the present day for a short while, Jonah had racked up quite a few murder charges. They were all justified, though, and they were all behind him now. So was his time spent as an inmate of Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. He was now a free man again, able to come and go as he pleased in Gotham, where he was currently renting a cheap hotel room while he figured out what his next move was going to be. Thanks to some lunatic named Booster Gold, he was now stuck in a time and place completely foreign to him.
One thing that wasn't foreign to him, though, was the weather. It was summer in Gotham, and between the leftover rain still on the pavement from the last thunderstorm and the ninety degree heat cooking it, the whole city was a stagnant, humid, pit of steam. Plus, the air conditioner in Jonah's crummy little hotel room didn't work. Not that it mattered much. Even if it had, he wouldn't have had it on. There was no A/C where he came from.
He was used to lying awake at night, half naked, in the dark, starring at the ceiling, sweating, and listening to the creatures of the night scurry around in the distance. In Gotham, the creatures of the night were cars and ambulances and police helicopters and those brave souls foolish enough to be out walking the streets of the city at one in the morning. Jonah could hear all this outside the open window next to his bed.
He grunted and rolled over onto his good side and starred at the empty bottle of Ratwater whiskey on his nightstand. Even that hadn't been able to help lull him to sleep tonight. The city noises were too new and different. He just couldn't get used to them.
Then he heard it; the sound of a man and woman arguing, heatedly, directly above his room. Since he was on the top floor, the only thing above him was the roof, so he found that a might peculiar. He glared up at the noise. The red, neon light of the hotel sign outside, which actually only said HOEL to be honest, cast deep shadows over the scared right side of his face and seemed to accentuate the dark anger building inside him.
"That does it," he growled to himself.
He slowly sat up and put his boots on, followed by a t-shirt Gina Green had given him that said Big Belly Burger on it, and then an old leather jacket he had found at goodwill over that. Finally, he took his old confederate army hat off the hook near the door and headed over to the window. He leaned his head out and looked up, but couldn't see the offending couple. He could still hear them, though, and the fire escape outside his window did lead up there, so he figured he'd go on and put the fear of god into them for being so loud at this hour. He grabbed his gunbelt off a nearby chair and fastened it around his hips. It held two six shooters he had also gotten from Gina. They were modern, but not too bad, he thought.
All ready for action, he ducked out the window and headed up to the roof. What he saw when he got there made him wish he had just minded his own business...