Poison Ivy

The humid Gotham night clung heavy with the usual cocktail of exhaust fumes and something else, something subtly sweet yet sharp, like overripe fruit on the verge of decay. It was a scent that tickled the back of the throat and hinted at a wildness that stubbornly refused to be paved over by concrete and steel. Drifting on the fetid breeze that snaked through Crime Alley, it led to a crumbling tenement building, its fire escape choked with an improbable riot of flowering vines. There, bathed in the sickly yellow glow of a flickering streetlamp, stood a figure whose skin held the vibrant, almost luminous green of jungle foliage. Her wild, auburn hair, threaded with thorny stems and luminous blossoms that pulsed with a faint inner light, framed a face of captivating beauty, marred only by the unwavering intensity in her emerald eyes. Poison Ivy was taking root in the forgotten corners of Gotham once more.