I got off the subway and set out with a brisk walk, the freezing air stinging my face with little pins and needles. New York is Jack Frost's personal playground in December. I re-wrap my scarf tighter around my neck, and pull my coat a little closer.
The streetlights turn on the moment I pass Stark Tower. Strange things happen around that building, and I've never liked the building's haughty owner much either.
I continue my walk, until I reach the outskirts of the city. The Bird's Nest is quiet. Good, I wasn't expecting any visitors, and I'm far too exhausted to fight any rascals off at the moment. I come to a stop at the old ruin of a building I call the Bird's Nest. My home for the last few years. It's falling apart, the fire escape is rusting so badly that the actual stairs fell to the street long ago and the door so smashed in that it doesn't open. But it's a work of art. A masterpiece of the street. The entire building is home to more than twenty years of graffiti. The last twenty years of gang disputes, random undiscovered artists unable to afford a canvas and of course, me. The once luxurious hotel is now covered in graffiti in a sort of gradient. The paint is thick, overlapping and dense at the bottom, as you look further up, there is less and less paint.
I slide my bag's strap off my shoulder and into my hand. I swing it high, over my head and then suddenly let it go. It flies through the broken window on the fifth floor without so much as a thread catching on the sharp shards of glass.
I swing my arms back and forth, warming up my frozen muscles briefly. I crouch down and spring up, launching my small self up, attacking myself to the old fire escape. I swing on the metal, then let go, and attach to another part of the structure, until I reach my floor. I swing through the window, twisting so I don't get run through with the shattered glass.
The room is large, a penthouse from the eighties, and furnished accordingly though many of the items are worn and moth-eaten. I flip the switch by the door and the light reluctantly flickers on, as if hesitant to awaken. The theme is blue. The entire room is different shades of blue, there's navy drapes, teal wallpaper, sky-colored tile in the bathroom. I pick my bag off the floor and hang the strap over a wooden chair. I flick my hand towards the TV and it turns to the news.
It's ten o'clock and that idiot Stark is still all over the media. The news can't get enough of the Avengers, and he's the only one with an identity they know, a doorbell they can ring over and over again in an incessant attempt for information. They've been doing it for the last 15 years.
The Avengers are heroes, right? But then they disappear. They don't help the random kid in the street being beat up for the five dollars in his pocket. Only the rich and important get help form the 'heroes'.
Guess who the rest of the responsibility falls to?
I slip on my suit, which is basically a tunic with leggings and my favorite boots, (not the glamorous things that spies wear, they're work boots and they're not something you want to hit you in the face.)
Oh yeah, and the entire thing is packed with my stuff, and my stuff can range from C4 to miniature cameras.
But I don't need them often.
I slip out the window again, this time climbing to the roof. I sit in my perch for a while, content.
But since when does peace last more than a second in New York?
I skid down the roof silently, despite the broken and unstable structure. The night air is silent, and the fog seems to engulf the area in a thick blanket.
I hear quiet footsteps and freeze, listening.
A small person (though still probably bigger than me), but carrying something.
I slip behind the wall, barely breathing.
The person comes around the corner and stops suddenly. He's seen me? That hasn't happened since I was ten, so that can't be it.
"Who's there?" He says his fists clenched. He's itching for a fight, though I have no idea why.
"I said, Who's there?!" He repeats, letting the bag fall off his shoulder, onto the damp street. Then, his eyes flick directly over my hiding place in the shadows, directly at my eyes.
I stop breathing, my eyes sharpen and I tense up completely.
He noticed me.
He saw me from the second he turned the corner, but noticing is something different, noticing means that he's read me as I read him when I heard his footsteps, he's analyzing whether or not I'm a threat.
The guy's small-ish compared to some of the guys I've beaten up, but he looks trained and muscular, and he keeps his face in the shadows where I can't see. But most importantly, the fact that he analyzes before attacks shows that he's smart.
"Friend or foe?" He asks suspiciously.
"Depends on who you are."
"So you don't know?"
"No. Am I supposed to?" I say honestly.
He shrugs "You don't seem like much of a threat."
"I get that a lot. Most who say that end up very…unhappy."
"Would you happen to be the Mist of New York?" He asks me bluntly.
"hm. Am I?" I say, not particularly caring if he figured out who I am.
"I dunno, I haven't seen you fight."
"Well good for you, then." I say with a bored tone.
He raises an eyebrow, "So if I turn my back you're gonna try to knock me out?"
"Not at all."
"But Mist doesn't like people knowing about her.."
"Did Mist tell you that?"
"No, but…"
"As a general rule regarding Mist, anything that she doesn't tell you about herself, is more likely than not, a flat out lie." I feel ridiculously uneducated referring to myself in third person.
"So you don't care?" He says carefully, deciding that I am Mist.
"Not one bit."
"Great."
He picks up his bag and turns around, continuing on his walk. He looks back once, but I've re-hidden myself. He shakes his head and continues.
He stops suddenly. And says without turning around, "My name's Jason Stark, in case you were wondering."
The gears in my head start spinning. Why was the son of a millionaire wandering around in the bad part of New York? What was he carrying? Why did he trust me with his name?
Strange.
I fiddle with my fingers, allowing a bit to come off. It turns to a metal-like substance and my finger regenerates without problem. I am basically metal. A machine with a human mind. I have liquid metal as blood, solid metal as bone and yet I function like a regular human. I am metal; I control metal, and anything involving metal or metalloids.
Absorb the metal back in and continue my nightly watch.
The Mist that protects the farthest corners of New York.