Okay – this is my first shot at fanfic in general, so R&R is appreciated. Please leave constructive criticism, creative flames, or just awesome reviews. You won't meet my OC for a few chapters, and I promise it'll get more interesting.

AND - since this is the first thing I've ever posted on this website, it'll probably change every few hours till I figure out what the fuck I'm doing.

I own nothing that sounds familiar.

Jim Gordon took a deep, calming breath before knocking on the door of the mayor's office. He wasn't looking forward to explaining how little progress had been made regarding the kidnapping of the mayor's personal assistant. It had been two days since Ellen had disappeared, and there were still no leads, no evidence, and no demands. Truth be told, the only evidence that she had been kidnapped was a short phone call the mayor had made when she failed to show up for work.

The mayor had called her cell phone. After five rings a woman answered, but it wasn't Ellen. According to the mayor, the voice had fluctuated between high pitched like a girl's and a low growl. When Gordon heard this, he had tried to imagine a feminine version of Batman's rough growl. The woman had told the mayor that Ellen was "going to be tied up for a few days." The last thing Anthony Garcia had heard was Ellen's scream mixed with a crazy laughter so similar to the Joker's that his blood ran cold.

"Come in," the mayor's voice spoke up on the other side of the door. Gordon put on an expression that he hoped looked confident and reassuring, and stepped into the office. Anthony Garcia looked up from his desk; Gordon could tell the past few days had taken their toll. The dark circles under his eyes and his worried expression aged the man a good 15 years. "Gordon," Garcia said, his voice forcibly neutral. "Please tell me you have some good news." The mayor's face darkened as Gordon shifted uneasily.

"Nothing yet," Gordon admitted. "We've been through Ellen's apartment twice sweeping for prints, but there's nothing. We have eyewitnesses claiming she came home, but none of her leaving or any trace of a struggle. We've gone through her family, friends, coworkers; no one has any information. It's like she just vanished."

Garcia struggled not to point out that people don't just vanish. Ellen had been a dear friend as well as a damn good assistant; the young woman was like family. "And you're sure this has nothing to do with the Joker?" he demanded. Gordon shook his head.

"Even if the Joker wanted to arrange this from Arkham, he's miked and watched 24/7," Gordon said with a frown. The truth of the matter was that aside from scaring the crap out of everybody at the asylum and stabbing a guard in the eye with a plastic fork, the clown had been relativly well behaved. Of course, compared to his usual activities, a hungry, rabid wolverine could be called 'relatively well-behaved.'

"What about batman? Any leads on him?" Garcia demanded next. Gordon struggled not to roll his eyes. In the last few weeks Garcia had been overly-eager to blame Batman for everything from murder to his coffee being too cold. It didn't matter that the voice had been distinctly female, or that Batman had always worked alone; Garcia still insisted the caped crusader had something to do with it.

Searching for Gotham's Dark Knight made Gordan sick. He had tried to avoid any real investigating for the first week after Harvey's demise. Smashing the 'bat-signal' and the press confrence was just fluff to keep Garcia and the press happy. Batman had noticed, and in an unexpected meeting that nearly gave Gordon a heart attack, told Gordon that he couldn't just fake a search.

Gordon couldn't tell the mayor that at the last Batman related scene they had checked over Batman had left clues to let the comissioner know that he was conducting his own investigation on Ellen's disappearance.

"My teams are still sweeping through the last…" Gordon's voice died off as something behind Garcia caught his eye.

"What is it?" Garcia demanded as the comissioner made his way around the desk and towards a large fake plant that decorated that corner of the office. The mayor edged his way closer, but Gordon motioned for the other man to stay back. There was definitly something in that plant – something that looked curiously like…

"A grenade?" Gordon said to himself in disbelief. He reached for it, but something told his hand to stop. A moment later her saw it; the wire that attatched the pin to the branches of the plant. A careless rustle of the thing would disloge the pin. Gordon quickly backed up, shouting into his walkie-talkie while pushing the mayor into the hall.

Ten minutes later the office was swarming with cops and specialty teams while Gordon consulted with one of his Lieutenants.

"The security teams found nothing on tape. We're still getting stories, but I don't think anyone who works here planted it," Lt. Lisa Monroe said. Gordon nodded wearily as one of the men working on extracting the explosive joined them.

"Sir, we found this attached to the pin," he said as he handed Gordon a Polaroid photo. Gordon froze; it was Ellen. The young woman was bound, gagged, and sitting the back seat of a police cruiser. Gordon turned the photo over. The picture was dated and captioned as if it were of a family vacation.

Ellen Marie Kensel – Rosenthorn Building, Roof

The date matched today's date, and the time…was twenty minutes from now.

Gordon began shouting orders and yelling for officers to follow him as he dashed to the stairs, silently thanking the building planner for putting the mayor's office ony five stories from the roof.

Bursting through the door that lead to the roof a few moments later, Gordon ran towards the parked cruiser. He'd worry about how the hell a car got onto the roof of the building without anyone noticing later. Right now the main concern was the dark lump in the back seat of the car that didn't seem to be moving. Throwing open the door to the cruiser, Gordon stepped aside to let two officers lift Ellen's covered, limp form from the 

car and carry her to the medical team waiting. Gordon's attention was on Ellen, so he didn't notice two officers pop the trunk of the car. He didn't see the timer counting down to the time marked on the photograph. And he missed the scared exclamation of "Oh Shit!" as they tried to run away.

He did notice the massive explosion that tore the car apart a second later. The fireball consumed half the roof and a half dozen officers along with it. Gordon felt the back of his clothes singe as he planted himself firmly between the explosion and the medical team. He found himself looking directly into Ellen's face and his blood ran cold. She had been dead for hours, by the looks of it; there was no way someone could look like that and survive. The back of Ellen's skull had been bashed in; her cheeks had been cut out leaving gaping holes that lead directly into her mouth; her eyes were gone.

An hour later Gordon numbly handed a GCN reporter a copy of the tape found on Ellen's body under the pretense that the public had the right to know about a new local terrorist. He just hoped that Batman was one of the 'public' watching the news.