Gotham: Panic Attack

Cat

2 Weeks Later

I stand over the fresh, gooey corpse - just looking down at his frozen, encapsulated eyes. This city is messed up.
Some kind of black slime oozes from his many orifices, and the derelict gear of a GCPD cop covers his form like a twisted memorial to this man's life. The body is stricken, petrified up against the wall of a little garden in the middle of a train station. Luckily for Violet (the personality that I'm currently wearing), the police had cordoned off the area and then hadn't de-cordoned it before I could reach the scene.

Anyhow, both detectives Gordon & Bullock know about my double-life, and so if anyone did chance to see me investigating the roadkill: then I'd have two pretty good alibis.
This guy was obviously poisoned somehow - I didn't need any deceptive to tell me that!
The problem was, there was no entry wound of any kind, meaning that no umbrellas were involved. So therefore the poison must have been ingested, or breathed in. I sigh with frustration, and my fingers start fondling the keyboard of my phone.

I jam the neat little device to my ear, and am relieved to hear the animated voice of Harvey Bullock in my head.
'Hey Violet. Whatcha lookin' for? Careful with ya answer - I don't trust you and I ain't about to start.'
'There's been a murder.' I slowly state, trying to contain my mild irritation at the smarmy detective.
'No shit.' He laughs.
'Pass me over to Gordon. Now.' I go even higher on the scale of one-to-angry.
With a brief interlude of continued beeping and whirring from the police's side of the call - Jim Gordon now has the time and effort to spend on little old me.

'Hello Jim. Nice to hear from you.'
'Is it, Violet?'
'I hope so.' I probably take far too much pleasure from lightly flirting with the boring cop. He's not my type, of course, but he doesn't know that. And what better way to get information? Mind you, that trick would probably work better on Harvey...

'What do you want?' He deadpans in the kind-of slightly annoyed voice that he manages to exercise at seemingly every opportunity.
'There's been a murder down by Benny's Station. I trust that you already know about it?' I ask in a butterfly voice.
'Yes. The ME called it a suicide. We're to leave it alone, apparently it's Maroni's business...'
'The ME calls everything a suicide' I moan, tapping my fingers nonchalantly on the metallic case of my mobile phone.
'I believe that's the point of them.' Chatters Jim in the closest thing to good humour that ever emanates from his gob.
'Oh. Crap. Nygma's trying to ask who I'm talking to.' Quickly adds Gordon to his previous statement before hanging up.

'Excellent.' I briefly take the time to sulk to myself as if it were a little praline-filled chocolate.
My face suddenly snaps upwards when I hear a small twinge of movement atop a balcony of one of the post-apocalyptic buildings of Benny's Station. The place had been named after some local drug addict for some unknown reason.

A small girl sits on a corrugated iron ladder, staring at me through a soot-spattered face. A steampunk-looking hoody hangs around her shoulders and a pair of aviator goggles adorn her curly, brunette hair.
I recognise this little urchin as The Cat.

'You a street kid 'round here?' Asks Cat gently, bending her head slightly to an angle like a predator investigating her prey.

I think for just a moment, and absent-mindedly ruffle my hair to prevent anyone from recognising Violet Paige. These sorts of people needed to know Mother Panic, not V.
'Yes. My name's V...' I smile coldly, making a swift effort to change my personality as much as possible.