The Batman's Daughter (except she doesn't know it)

We need the Batman (warning: cliffhanger ending!)

The Snowflake Cotilion was the biggest formal event at Gotham Girls Academy, more highly attended than the Homecoming Ball, or the Spring Gala, even the Sweetheart's Banquet (held at the Gotham Museum of Art the Saturday after Febuary 14th), and this year the comittee had managed to get the Iceberg Lounge (owned by on-again-off-again criminal Oswald Cobblepot - Batman was always catching him) as the site this year. One of the sweet, slightly geeky lacrosse players from the Thomas Wayne School for Boys downtown  had asked me this year, and though I usually went with friends, I took him up on his offer. Mom was thrilled. She always said I didn't do enough with boys (and this was my choice - they almost never left me alone, especially when a dance was coming up. I got enough flowers and chocolates to keep all of Martha dorm stocked until next Valentine's Day.)

Tonight was the night, and it was going well. Cody, my date, had picked me up on the school's front steps in his father's restored Cadilac, painted sunset orange, and complimented me on my ice blue strapless gown and faux-diamond choker (I didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't real) and chandelier earrings set. He drove slowly through the city, playing the smoky jazz we both loved on the radio, and I felt the stirrings of a crush, and wanted this boy to kiss me, soft and slow.  He had, (twice) since we'd arrived at the Iceberg, and now we were slow dancing. It felt so oddly natural, which is why I didn't notice the doors open, the rat-a-tat-tat of gunshots shooting out the lights until the glass shards fell on my shoulders like sharp, dangerous snowflakes. I looked up to see creepy mini-blimps with clown faces painted on them and lights hanging from the bottom above our heads. The attractive blonde in a tight red dress with thigh-high slits and diamond cutouts wearing onyx, diamond and ruby playing card-shaped jewelry (who had my date staring, even though he knew, like all of us, that she was the accomplice of the worst sociopathic criminal in the city of Gotham) looked bored, like she'd been hoping for a night out on the town instead of another bloody spree. The Joker, in his signature colorful suit and accessories strolled through the now-frightened teens, checking out the pretty girls, deciding which one would make the best victim. I'd never seen him up close, and the high-cheekboned, cruelly thin white face, green hair, red lips...it was scarier than the news photos that, when we saw them on TV, squealed and hid our faces in sofa pillows. Suddenly he lashed out at Cody with the metal head of his new comedy-tragedy mask cane (something he'd supposedly forced Gotham's most famous sculptor into making for him by holding her at gunpoint), and my sweet, gentle, romantic date crumpled to the floor, blood matting his dark hair, silver crown (they'd declared us Cutest Couple of the night) bouncing off his head and settling a few feet away. The calculating, manipulative eyes were on me now, scanning my body and then my face until we stared each other down.  His bony, white, long-fingered hand shot forward and shoved me up against the wall, the other one brandishing a gun in my face.

"You've crowned your princess of the night...and what a pretty, pretty princess she is. But you look scared, beautiful. Is it because I slayed your prince?" I covered my mouth in shock. Had he really killed Cody? One of our chaperoning teachers had managed to sneak him out a side door and call the paramedics...but that didn't automatically mean he was saved.

"Maybe you need a new prince." He picked the discarded crown off the floor, and rested it on his own head.

"Would that put a smile on your pretty face...or do I need to do it for you? But you don't feel like smiling. Poor princeless princess. Maybe you need to join your prince. Would that make you happy? Would it make you smile again? It'd make me smile. So, who wants to see me smile? Who wants me to kill the princess?" He grinned wide, cocking the trigger, and I waited.

Waited to die.