Another missing animal. This one was a lion--a damn lion!--that had been nabbed from the Gotham Zoo. Wildcats weren't really Penguin's style, but up until this point, this case had his sweaty little paws all over it. A handful of birds had gone missing, correlating with a rise in jewel robbery, and Cobblepot's activities were getting suspicious. If that didn't sign Penguin's name on the crime, I don't know what else could.
Still, he was managing to be clever, and making my life miserable. Dad wouldn't buy into my conclusions until I came up with hard evidence, and with this little trick of throwing a cat into the mix, he was never going to let me close this case and move on.
I snarled to myself as I dropped the remnants of a tranquilizer into a plastic bag and placed it in my belt.
What the hell did Penguin want with a lion, anyway? He had to know I was on the case, and he just wanted throw a wrench in the path. These criminals got some kind of sick pleasure playing games with us. Especially the joker. Yet, we always kept chasing them, so who was really the sicker one?
I walked the perimeter of the enclosure, looking for signs of forced entry. Everything was spotless, which meant that whoever had taken the lion out had behind the scenes access to the animals and the enclosures. They were probably smart enough to use gloves, too. But, I might as well check for fingerprints while I'm here anyway. After all, "a good detective pursues every possible avenue."
A good detective also goes with their gut, and my gut tells me this is the handiwork of Mr. Cobblepot.
Unfortunately, if that detective is 15 years old and happens to be the daughter of The "greatest detective in the world," going by gut instincts doesn't count as sufficient work. It's called lazy work.
As I dusted the handle for the keepers entrance, my jaw began to grind. There were fingerprints, alright. A. lot. How many handlers did lions need!? Maybe I should have read up on how zoos actually work. Tim does background work on cases like that all the time. He reads and Googles the hell out of everything, to the point where he's almost like the babbling weirdos who have a disease from the search engines on the Bing commercials. But, my brain isn't as spongey as his. I can smell myself burning out when I've absorbed too much, and the only time I can handle sitting still for so long is when I'm drawing. And I even hesitate to count that because when I work on my art I go into an alternate consciousness altogether, so that I don't even know hours have passed without movement. Maybe gathering intelligence is the same for Tim.
There was a snarl next to me and I glanced at the lioness. There were three altogether, but only one had woken up and she watched me from her enclosure with still yellow eyes. That might be an interesting note. The male had been taken, and all the females were left behind. From the brief knowledge I did have, lions are the king of the jungle, but they don't exactly do much except sleep 20 hours a day. The lioness, however, carries the pride on her shoulders. She's the one who hunts for the food and raises the next generation of lions. Even now, her yellow eyes seemed indifferent to the missing king. If anything, she looked jealous. Why should that lazy cat get to go out while she was stuck here?
I looked around her enclosure and nodded. "It's small, isn't it?"
She blinked at me.
"I'll bring your boy back. If I could, I'd get all of you out of here, but then... we'd all be in trouble. Sorry."
The lioness yawned and thick, moist air that smelled like the back of a meat room congregated over us. I wiped my nose with the back of my glove and moved away with slow steps.
"Batgirl?" Robin said over the earpiece in my cowl.
"What's up?"
"How are things going?"
I rolled my eyes, even though my lips curved into a smile. "Just chasing a missing lion. What about you?" We were working on separate cases. Dad didn't let us hang around each other too often. Ever since that little lip action he walked in on last year, he felt that we only distracted each other.
"I've got a burglary in progress at a jewelry store here on the corner of 47th. They look armed, I'll need backup."
"On my way."
I ditched the Zoo and hopped onto the Batcycle. It was my primary mode of transportation. Robin didn't use it anymore because he'd been given a car. I had been so shocked when he got to unveil that shiny red vehicle on his 16th birthday. His father and mine had joined forces to get it for him. It wasn't just any old car either, it could instantly transform into a crazy warlike machine, similar to the batmobile, but in red. It was genius. During the day, as Tim Drake, it looked like a classic old sports car that had been restored, but at night, it was the Redbird, the boy wonder's mode of transportation. I do love that the bike is all mine now. Although, sometimes, I get a little envious. He gets to use the car as both Tim Drake and as Robin, while I only get the bike after the city is asleep.
I took a sharp turn around a corner, I felt my body go low to the ground, my knee just above the asphalt and my cape slapping the air behind me. When I straightened, I was shooting down the street to Robin's location. The alarm for the jewelry store was ringing, the emergency white lights flashed like lightning over the broken glass. On the rooftops, I saw a gang dressed in black, leaping and flipping like clumsy parkour athletes. My eyes widened, it was them. The "ninjas" that had been robbing every antique goods, jeweler, and museum, on all corners of the city. Robin was on that case and this was the closest he'd gotten to them since being assigned 4 weeks ago. I saw him jump between the buildings and shoot his grappling hook in attempt to cut them off. A few of them made a fast turn and tossed objects at him. A moment later, smoke flashed up in a thick cloud with a pop and a bright white light imprinted the spinning shapes of shruikens cutting through the air toward Robin. He stumbled and my heart caught in my throat.
He was on his feet again not a second later. He'd deployed a roll to avoid the weapons, and his grappling hook attached to an adjacent building. He used the momentum to carry him around the blinding smoke and ahead of the thieves. They saw him coming, the leader made a sharp turn and the rest followed suit. They dropped more smoke bombs. I twisted the throttle on my bike to speed up, driving parallel to the amateur ninjas. They pulled bo staffs out and used them to make a 12 foot jump to a building that was two stories higher. All of them made a very clean jump, it seemed a standard move in their repertoire.
Except for the last one, who was trailing; he'd been scrambling instead of running ever since the smoke bombs. I saw him tearing the bo staff out, his steps weren't measured. The poor guy was terrified and in a panic, watching his ninja troupe complete the jump with ease while he trailed further and further behind, with one of the city's vigilantes gaining on him.
I frowned and shook my head. Don't jump.
"WAIT!" Robin shouted after him.
It was too late.
The amateur tried the jump, miscalculating the distance, and executing it without the necessary power. I sped by the alley as his body plummeted to the ground with a desperate shriek following behind.
I slammed on the brakes and pulled a 180 spin. A couple of the ninjas glanced back, but never stopped moving. I let them get away with a deep inhale and murmured the bike back down the block. When I got there, Robin had already climbed to the ground and stood over the twisted body. He turned to me with a sad frown, and I knew that his green eyes were dull and depressed under the mask.
We never killed anyone, it was the one law that was unbreakable to us. However, that didn't mean we never saw death. Two years of vigilante work in the crime capital of the nation had already put me around a fair share of homicide, man-slaughter, suicide, and the like. It hadn't been new stuff to me, I'd participated in crime before Batman plucked me out of the streets, but back then it was just like passing dead animals on the side of the road. It was simply a common consequence and part of life on the streets. Now, I was supposed to get close to the bodies, study them and learn about who they'd been, and the life they'd left behind. It was exhausting, and painful. I hated it so much that every time I came around a body, my throat dried, my chest sank, and the bile in my stomach twisted. It was something I couldn't get used to, and I hoped with every part of me that I never would. I'd learned that there was something very unnatural about a robbed life, even if the taker was the victim's own hands.
Further more, I couldn't understand those who could take lives without a second thought. Crimes of passion I could somewhat feel for. I'd been in a blinding fury once and attempted to stab Johnathon Crane with a steak knife when he interrupted a lovely breakfast at my favorite Greek restaurant last year. But, premeditated kills disturbed me. Murderers who took dozens of lives for sport and gloated about each one like a trophy haunted me.
I heard the batmobile rumble by and park just outside the alley. Batman emerged moments later, the black cape and ears of his cowl stabbed straight through the grimy yellow street lights and into the orange night sky.
"What happened?"
Robin cleared his throat. "He panicked, mistimed the jump, and died on impact."
"Alright, we'll gather what we can and leave the rest for the police." Batman knelt down and proceeded to unmask the ninja. "He was just a kid, not much older than you two from the looks of it." He shook his head in disappointment as the mask came off and I looked into the face of a boy who was quite ordinary in every way.
Robin gasped. "He goes to school with us!"