Justice League And The Hounds Of Hell

Chapter 1: Lost Lion and a Dead Ninja

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?"