Hello, hello, ShadowMajin here, returning to the Batman section with the next chapter of AnonymousVoid and my series. This has been a story long in the making, pretty much being created at the same time as AV's Thirteen Nightmares Ascend was being brainstormed. We have a lot of good stuff for y'all, so we hope you enjoy.

Her name was Alice.

"Alice Simmons, 16 years old, honor roll student at Gotham High," Dent spoke, rattling off the victim's biography as if he had it memorized. It was very likely he did. "She's on the volleyball team and captain's the soccer team. She stands at 5'8", weighs around 115 lbs, blonde hair, blues eyes, and according to her classmates, very popular. She was walking home with friends after school before she decided to take a shortcut down the alley between Marrows and 68th. That was the last anyone has seen of her."

It had been 72 hours since the girl's disappearance. She was originally listed as a missing person before being upgraded to kidnapping when police retraced the girl's steps.

Gravel crunched beneath Gordon's shoes as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. "We know the girl was taken on the Marrows' side of the ally. The shopkeeper of a secondhand store saw a white van pull up in front of Simmons, pulled her in, and sped off. We found the skid marks where the tires peeled off."

It was...unusual that Dent and Gordon presented a kidnapping case. Most of these rooftop meetings dealt with mob movements, drug shipments, and the like. A missing teenager, while intolerable, was not a normal occurrence.

Unless that teenager just so happened to be the niece of a senator.

"Any word from the senator?" Gordon asked, directing his question to Dent.

"Oh, you know, the usual 'I want my niece found or it's your job' threat," the DA shrugged off. "But between the three of us, the sooner she's found, the better and not because of who her uncle is."

Cape enveloping him, Batman turned his attention to the police commissioner. "What other evidence did your forensics team find?"

"Other than the tires being Goodyears?" Gordon retorted. "Not much other than her purse. Currently we're trying to get a list of all cars and trucks that have purchased that particular tire, but I'm not expecting much. The license plate numbers the shopkeeper was able to get turned out to belong to a Kenny Stills in Monroe, Louisiana and he's hasn't left that state since the end of World War II. In all likelihood, the van is stolen and that's not going to get us any closer."

To be honest, it was probably too late for Alice, unfortunately. They were beyond the first 48 hours where the likelihood of finding her was at its best. Her trail was cold now, the kidnappers long gone. Without any further leads, her fate would be determined by the captor's whim. Considering her age, it didn't look good that she'd be kept in Gotham and unviolated.

"I'll recanvas the scene," the Batman said then. "See if there's anything that was missed in the initial investigation."

"I'll keep on trying to ID the van," Gordon replied, not the least bit offended. It wasn't a matter of insinuating poor police work, but having a fresh set of eyes. That wasn't taking into account the vigilante's knack for catching things that others missed either.

"And I'll buy us more time from Senator Simmons," Dent added. "He's more bluster and bravado than he is an actual threat, but he could complicate matters if he decides to take matters into his own hands."

That was the end of the meeting, unofficially anyways. There were still logistics to discuss on Dent and Gordon's side, but that didn't matter much to the dark-clad man. Turning away, he glided over the roof until he reached the edge, leaping off of it and falling over the side. Activating the electric current in his gauntlet, he grabbed his cape and felt it stiffen behind him, his descent coming to a halt as he began to soar forward.

Wind blowing by his head and around his body, Batman angled his flight around a building, heading towards a lower one to land on. As the distance closed between him and it, he released his hold on his cape and felt it go slack, dropping him down onto the roof where he immediately kicked off into a run. Reaching to his belt, he pulled out his grapple and fired it at the much taller building in front of him. Feeling the cable go tant once it hit the anchor point, he hit the retraction button and launched up into the air.

Because of this, he was given the sight of the large round light in the sky, a bat symbol in the middle of it. It had been a year since Gordon and Dent had erected that signal, something that even now the Batman wasn't used to. It was unfamiliar having people having a way to command his presence, but it had proven useful during its time.

Not to mention Gordon's perchance for leaving it on throughout the night. Statistics had shown that crime had a noticeable decline whenever it was on and the commissioner wasn't one to not use a tool that had such results.

It was just a shame that tonight's usage had to involve a teenage girl.

However, if there was one thing that Batman was, it was determined. Damn the odds against finding her, he would make sure to bring her home, no matter what it took.

Her name was Alice and he would find her.

Unlike most alleyways, the one between Marrows and 68th was clean and maintained. It didn't give off a negative, unwelcoming aura that most alleys did, so it made sense why a teenage girl living in one of the more dangerous cities in America decided to use it as a shortcut. Unfortunately, that proved to be a bad move on her part this time.

Standing at the mouth of the alleyway, Batman slowly panned his head from left to right, making sure the lens in his cowl recorded everything. Once he was sure that was done, he began to retrace the crime scene.

The first thing the dark-clad man was quick to note was the damp areas on the nearby buildings and ground—evidence there had been rain recently. That was a problem. Three days was a long time for a crime scene to be exposed to the elements; any potential lead that was out here was contaminated by the rain water, not to mention the wind possibly blowing other clues away, such as scraps of paper or food wrappers. The crime scene was very poor and it irritated the Dark Knight to know that his best chance for leads was long gone. Regardless, he would perform his own canvass of the scene and see if he could find something that slipped by the GCPD.

Starting with the skid marks on the street, the vigilante moved to stand over them, looking down at the black markings. They were the darkest to the left, fading as they stretched to the right; this indicated the van headed north towards downtown. There weren't any irregularities in the marks, a sign that the tires were maintained and not wearing down. Tire purchases was not the way to go, unfortunately for the police. And because it had been three days since the kidnapping, the tracks themselves were not as prominent as the time they were made. They were beginning to look much like the other tire marks on the street, soon to be just another scar no one bothered to notice.

Turning around, he looked at the sidewalk, mentally reciting the police report in his head. Alice's purse had been found on the sidewalk, fallen from her shoulder as she had been grabbed. The contents of the purse were typical of a teenage girls: wallet, make-up, mirror, tic-tacs, and strangely enough a candle. However, what wasn't found was her cell phone.

Seeing as the Simmons' family had a family phone plan with their provider, three of the phones were accounted for as belonging to the father, mother, and brother—that left one missing, and thus belonging to Alice. So if the phone wasn't in her purse, logic dictated that she had been holding onto it when she was grabbed. And since the police hadn't found the phone on the scene…

Reaching to his belt, Batman opened a pouch and pulled out a palm pilot, activating it as the screen lit up. Hitting a button, the vigilante spoke into the device, "Computer: perform a GPS trace on the Simmons family' phones."

While it was a certainty the GCPD had looked for her phone, the fact they hadn't found it yet indicated they weren't searching effectively. It was most likely they had the girl's cell phone number and were monitoring it for its use, triangulating it from there. While that was a good idea, it depended entirely on luck. The kidnappers could have removed the phone or had the good sense not to use. That left tracing the phone through that avenue as a dead end.

However, there were other ways. For instance, every phone had a GPS chip embedded in the device. If one were to acquire the chip's frequency, they could follow the signal back to its source, which was what the Dark Knight was doing. Yet, this also could possibly be a dead end as well. If the phone was off, the GPS chip would be inactive and that would be one less way to find Alice. And since it had been three days, the odds the phone had any power left were miniscule at best. Still, Batman would be doing the girl a disservice if he didn't try everything he could to help her.

Lowering his handheld device, the dark-clad man continued his observations. Glancing down to the sidewalk in front of his boots, he noticed some scuff marks. Kneeling down for a closer look, the vigilante took in the breadth and length of their marks, along with the color. They were faded, and given a few days they would have gone unnoticed even to the sharpest eye. While such marks weren't uncommon on concrete walkways, the fact that these marks were parallel to each other and the distance between them was roughly the same length as two legs spread apart from another, it was possible this was the exact spot where Alice was grabbed.

If that were the case, then she put up some resistance, bracing her feet on the ground and pushing back as she was pulled forward, which caused the bottom of her shoes to scrape on the concrete. Considering she was an athlete, it would've taken a rather strong person to pull her against her will. It was likely the perpetrator was a large man with the strength to match. It also eliminated the scenario of someone sneaking up on her and grabbing her. If that were the case, the normal action would be to lift the girl off the ground and force her forward. In this case, she was pulled towards the van.

A sharp beeping sound interrupted Batman's thoughts, causing him to raise his palm pilot up and hold it in front of his face. On the screen was a map of Gotham, zoomed in to encompass four dots. Three of the dots were along the left border of the screen—undoubtedly the phones belonging to the Simmons family. It wasn't surprising to see them all together considering their current tragedy.

That just left the fourth and lone dot up in the upper right corner. Zooming in on the dot, the Dark Knight triangulated the location, eyes narrowing beneath his cowl. That was just outside downtown in the Industrial sector. It seemed luck was giving him a helpful hand but providing the Simmons' girl's phone with enough juice to last this long.

Putting the palm pilot into hibernation mode, Batman quickly pocketed the device before pulling out his grapple. Firing it towards a nearby building, he waited for the line to tighten before he began retracting it, lifting off the ground and into the air. Though unlikely this was to be the girl's location, it would provide some clue as to her fate, be it good, bad, or otherwise.

The soft groaning of weakening metal rang out until the bolts holding the grate gave out. The grate fell from the wall and landed on the floor with a loud clang! The cement walls of the building made the clanging bounce and echo in the desolate building.

Emerging from the vent, Batman dropped to the ground, landing softly in comparison to the grate. Upon reaching this place, the vigilante had done a recon of the site, determining fairly quickly that the place was abandoned. Still, to prevent contamination of the potential crime scene, the vigilante had snuck in through the ventilation system.

It wasn't a large room by any standard; in fact, this building was nothing more than a forgotten gas station with an attached garage. The building was originally a tire-change shop that was run out of business and the owners simply left it behind.

This made it perfect for stashing a stolen vehicle, such as the white van in front of Batman. There was some room to walk around, but not much so he had to be careful lest he contaminate something. Slowly he walked around the van, spotting the Louisiana license plate on the back end. A glance at the numbers and letters on the plate informed him he had a match for the one the GCPD had done a check on. At least he had the right vehicle.

A glance around the shack made the vigilante pause for a moment. On the floor, he couldn't help but notice a large number of footprints present. Obviously this place wasn't well-maintained, which left a nice film of grime on the floor. Kneeling down, Batman studied a couple of the nearby prints.

The shoe prints were large, a few of which had different patterns. Picking out a check mark and a few leaf designs, it didn't take much for the Dark Knight to figure out that at least two men wore Nike and Adidas shoes. The computer in the cave would be able to analyze these prints and determine what shoes they belonged to and their sizes. From there he could obtain a list of purchases for those specific shoes and match the purchases against his profile of the kidnappers.

With that done, that just left the van for further observation. Approaching the back doors, the dark-clad man grabbed the handle and twisted it, swinging the door open to reveal the van to be empty aside from pieces of trash. Slowly sweeping his vision from the back bumper to the back of the front seats for his recordings, Batman then began searching for any clues left behind.

The first thing he spotted were hairs, particularly long blonde ones. Reaching for his belt, Batman pulled out a small plastic bag and tweezers. Carefully he picked up the hairs and held them in the air, opening the small bag and holding it underneath his sample. Placing the hairs in it, he was quick to seal the bag and place it into his belt.

He continued his search. Fortunately he found more hairs, these different from the blonde strands he initially found. Putting them in their own baggies, the vigilante then began to venture into the vehicles, being sure to scan every last inch of the floor bed.

He had only moved a couple steps in when he came to a full stop. There, in between the grooves of the floor bed there was a stain, long dried by time. Reaching to the pouch next to the one he pulled out the baggies, he pulled out a vial. Twisting the top off, he held the top out, a small q-tip extending from the bottom of the cap. Carefully, he dabbed the swab on the stain, sure to retrieve a sample on cotton head. He then stuck the swab back into the vial and twisted the top back on, adding it to his collection of evidence.

A little further into the van left the vigilante finding a black zip tie. It was very likely the kidnapper had used it or one just like it to tie up Alice Simmons. The zip tie found itself also in a small plastic baggy and secured into the pouch with the hair strands.

Reaching the back of the front seats, Batman found himself frowning. The reason for him being here was because he had been able to track the Simmons girl's cell phone. Unless it was lying somewhere on the floor in this shack, it had to be in the van. Considering that it was still here, the kidnapper couldn't have known about it, otherwise they would've disposed of it. So it had to be in the van for the SIM card to still be active.

As it turned out, there was a gap between the floor bed and the front seat. Eyeing the gap, Batman scanned it from left to right, stopping right behind the passenger seat. There. Reaching into the gap, his fingers touched a small, flat object, the dark-clad man grabbing it and pulling it out.

Lo and behold, his fingers were clutching a cell phone. Hitting the On button, it quickly became apparent that the battery was out of power. He would just have to charge it once he left this place. Again, he pulled out a baggie and placed the phone in it. While it would be best for the police to get their hands on the phone, they would just have to wait their turn. The vigilante had a better chance of discovering something in the memory card than the forensics team.

With the phone secure in his belt, that just left the front seat remaining in his investigation. Leaning into the gap between the driver's and passenger's seats, Batman studied the dashboard, seats, and doors. Again, this was all for his recording so he could go through the scene a second time in the cave.

Once he had the record, Batman began further searching. As luck would have it, there were short, dark hairs on the headrests, the first visual confirmation of Alice's kidnapper—make that kidnappers. If there was someone pulling the girl into the van, there had to be someone driving it as well in order to snatch the surprised teen and speed off as fast as the incident was reported to be.

Further searching, unfortunately, didn't prove as rewarding. Though Batman hadn't been expecting to find any, there wasn't any registration for the van, further cementing the vehicle as stolen. The same with any verification or license of the van's owner. While that would have made the investigation so much easier, it wasn't entirely unexpected.

However, that didn't mean he wasn't out of further avenues of evidence-collecting. Considering that kidnappers had been careless enough to leave hairs in the car, there was a decent probability they left something more damning: fingerprints. It would take a lot of time to get fingerprints of every person that had been in the van and that was a commodity he didn't have an abundance of. Neither did Alice for that matter, assuming she was still alive.

Aside from time though, the dark-clad man didn't have enough powder to brush the entire van. That meant he had to use it as best he could and he knew exactly where to start: the steering wheel.

Once he was done here, he'd send an anonymous tip to Gordon about this place so that the GCPD could have a go. They could get the rest of the prints he couldn't and process them while he ran tests on the other evidence he had collected.

Batman paused. No, with the number of footprints on the floor, that was a clear indication that this place was active and not just a one-time dump. If the police were here, the kidnappers would be scared off and he'd have to begin his search all over again. Perhaps prudence was in order here.

Turning to leave the van, Batman came to a sudden halt. Staring at the side of the vehicle, he was quick to note the presence of a sliding side door. Recalling the eyewitness' report, there had been a mention of a side door. Perhaps there was a possibility of finding prints on the door handle here as well; he had enough powder to do it as well.

It was time to get started then.

One thing I noticed during the writings of the previous stories was a distinct lack of investigation on Batman's part. So I wanted to delve into that aspect of the character, considering he does have a reputation as the World's Greatest Detective. He may not have that title just now in this series, but hopefully this chapter moved him a step closer. That being said, there's more exciting thing's just around the corner! Stay tuned!