By: Kagmichiru and DracoCron

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to us, except possibly Whisper and some of our interpretive work.

Thanks very much to the Doctor and vampassassin for your excellent reviews (and the answer to both your questions are "yes" ;))! And of course to Minerva's Cat, our first faithful reader. :)

"Stalemate."

The Riddler sighed, rising from his seat and looking up at the ceiling of his inner sanctum, painted black and scattered with stars. It was annoying, this latest incident... although the fact that two dozen mob leaders had been eliminated was certainly cause to celebrate, he would have preferred that he not have to sacrifice the freedom of his best lieutenant to do so. But she'd agreed to the plan, after all, and the sacrifice was worth it.

Still, he felt strangely and uneasy without her around. Part of him said that this was only rational; while he was faster than he looked and a very skilled marksman, he likely wouldn't be able to stand up for long against most of the criminals he was destroying in a physical fight. But another part of him--the part that almost always was in charge--said that it was foolish. He was in the most heavily protected room in the most heavily protected building in the city, and from it, he could manipulate the lives of many without ever needing to put himself in danger.

Whisper's presence was comforting, though, as though she was a living example of what humanity could be like if it ever acheived enlightenment under his guiding hand--a goal, he repeated to himself, that was getting ever closer for him. With the upper echelon of the mob obliterated, he could be almost certain that no other forces would mount any kind of active opposition to his plans... at least, not of the sort that he would have any kind of trouble dealing with.

He smiled as he remembered Gordon's preliminary overtures of investigation against his company. The man was so earnest, it was almost heartwarming. How he'd managed to get into a position of power was beyond the Riddler, but he was forced to deal with it.

It had all gone very well, however. Nigma had acted the part of shocked and disappointed father figure in front of Gordon, and it had worked like a charm, just after he'd played the part in his morning news broadcast; as usual, his philosophy of freely revealing all facts about yourself that were going to be discovered anyway had paid off, he believed. "Eccentric," they said about him, "but honest to a fault."

While that last part wasn't even close to being correct, no one had a chance to find out differently. Gordon and his men had made as thorough a search through the company's books as they'd ever done, but all they found was more and more evidence that the Puzzle Box had been a prototype for a military contract that Nigma had been hoping on winning in the near future. A device that would work as either a grenade or an explosive charge, and potentially flooded the area with napalm to boot, could be a very useful if nasty tool for the army. He could practically see Gordon squirm as he tried to find something, anything, he could use against the company, but it was airtight. Internal security had been toughened, since that one time long ago...

The Riddler sighed again. Back in a smaller town, some young ambitious fool in R&D, who'd been planning to blackmail Nigma about the real purpose of the Puzzle Box, had been... efficiently stopped. First, Whisper had fed the information to a local tabloid newspaper which was running out of ideas. After that story (THE TRUTH IS OUT: E. NIGMA'S SECRETARY--MAD BOMBER!!) had broken, Nigma knew his reputation was safe, but to be on the safe side, he changed the elevator passcode one night when the idiot had been working alone. He was dropped off at the wrong floor, and not surprisingly given the nature of the building, was never seen again. He didn't consider a skeletal hand, found ten stories up from where the man had been left, to count as being seen again. After that, he knew he could count on his employees' loyalty... very much.

And he knew that he could do so for this latest plan. Even he had associates who were... shall we say, slightly shady, and they knew what to do. At the earliest possible opportunity, poor, orphaned Whisper would be the victim of the mob revenge hit. A hit so efficiently carried out that no trace of her would ever be seen again...

The Riddler smiled wickedly. Once Whisper was back in his building, he could move onto the next step of his grand scheme... and soon, all of Gotham would be his, and his alone.

As it must be...

At that moment, Whisper could not be aware that her smile mirrored her master's. Part of her was thankful to Gordon for trying to think the best of her; he was an astute one, surprising given how hard he clung to the broken legal system. But of course, his powers of deduction were as nothing compared to the Riddler's... combined with her own considerable skills at acting, the fools in the GCPD would be left absolutely nowhere, and with nothing linking Whisper's crimes to anyone but herself. And soon, they would not even have her…

The Riddler would get her out of here. It was not his highest priority—his own good name was certainly more important than her freedom, but he would manage it nonetheless. He had made clear that despite her willingness to be sacrificed, he would intervene in the event of her capture, in such a way that the escape could not possibly be traced to him. And he had never let her down. Not since she first met him…

Before she met him, her life had had no purpose. No goal to pursue, no direction, not even the means to feed and clothe herself. Back then she had been homeless, her world ruled by paranoia—a clinic doctor once told her she verged on schizophrenia. She didn't know what the diagnosis meant; she only knew that her days were ruled by irrational fears and her nights by delusions, and at that point in her existence surviving was merely a reflex with no reason behind it. Only fear had kept her alive, and the occasional mercy of others.

She could not clearly remember the days that had left her like that, now. She knew her family must have been killed—at least she remembered a time when she had a family, and then a time when she didn't. It was for the better, she thought, that she didn't remember what had happened. Those memories had done nothing but traumatize her.

Then, she'd met him. On that day... she'd been startled by the sound of an explosion, momentarily terrified, then fascinated as she looked up to see smoke and flames pouring from the entrance of the bank, a safe distance away. Having nothing else to do, she had abandoned her empty change cup and crept closer to watch the fire, wondering what could have caused it.

As the flames began to die down, leaving only black smoke pouring from the hole, he had come. She shivered as she remembered him. He hadn't been wearing his trademark outfit, only a bland, grey suit and tie. But she could sense something special about him from the moment she laid eyes on him. His red hair and blue eyes seemed to glow, only accentuated by the drabness of the suit and his grim surroundings, seeming perfectly at home in an otherwise ordinary face. His presence was calming. No, not merely calming, she corrected herself. It was calm itself. It was the essence of pure calm, his self-assured manner, his easy smile, his sense of absolute certainty that nothing could touch him even as he walked through charred embers and into a blown-out bank vault. Absolutely calm in the midst of absolute failures in the way the world was supposed to work. He was exactly what she needed.

The sight of him had blasted through her walls of self-imposed terror like the Puzzle Box she later learned he'd used on the bank vault. She had followed him into the bank, followed him into the vault, and when he noticed her with some surprise, she asked him who he was. His surprise and suspicion had melted as he laid eyes on her; he smiled kindly, gave her his name, and asked for hers in return. She had followed him out of the bank vault and into the getaway van, and had never looked back since.

She had been his most devoted follower from that moment on, and he had seemed to take a special interest in her. He gave her impeccable training and a job, then more training—special training. Ultimately, he entrusted her with knowledge of his ultimate aim: to use his superior intellect to bring enlightenment to the human race. It had always, he said, been an illogical thing, but in the increasing complexity of modern society, humanity's irrationalities were more damaging than ever before. More damaging to the innocents caught up in the machine, like her. It was his mission to gain the knowledge and the means to reform all of humanity.

He had even shared with her his greatest secret: a formula, still in development, with which he could achieve immortality. With that loan of time, he could act at any speed he chose. He could spend eternity accruing information, testing theories, designing systems. And then... he had offered her the same thing, if she would consent to be his right hand.

She barely had to think at all.

Several years and a few cities later... here they were, in the place where the Riddler would have unfettered access to the minds of the populace at last, and carefully lead them into being paragons of humanity that would serve as examples for the rest of the race. It would be a tough battle, of course; Gotham was nowhere near a proto-utopia at the moment. But that would be the Riddler's greatest achievement; starting out with a city that seemed incurable, a city whose name had become synonymous with crime, and turn it into an ideal society. That would be undeniable proof that the Riddler's plans would work in any city or society.

And now, thanks to his generosity, she was not only immortal but eternally young. She would remain forever in her top physical condition, at the peak of her beauty, as long as she continued his treatments. There was one side affect, immaterial to her, but vaguely troubling on a conceptual level. Her skin, blood, and tissues had become toxic to normal humans. The affects had first become apparent on her sparring partner; formerly her combat trainer, he had become increasingly ill with prolonged contact to her. She didn't know how much her condition had progressed since then, and she didn't care to test it…

An odd affliction certainly, but it was one she could live with.

Suddenly, the quality of sound from the outside changed. There was a distant impact, muffled and far-away…the sound of an explosion? Sirens began to wail, followed by the sound of gunshots. Yes, it was definitely an explosion.

Slowly, Whisper stood and walked to the door of her cell to peer through the small glass window. The hall was filled with a swirling fog—smoke, or perhaps it was some sort of gas. Odd…she had assumed, based on the Riddler's plan, that it would be at least a day or two before he extracted her…

Figures were materializing through the mist outside, and they wore gas masks. So it was a gas…that would fit with her master's style.

The cell door slid open, admitting the swirling gas. Whisper smelled it, a sharp, acrid smell, and knew at that moment that something was not right. She lashed out at the first masked intruder, easily knocking him off balance, but her strikes were weaker, sluggish and uncoordinated. The gas was getting to her, making her feel dizzy and weak.

Two more masked men evaded her strikes, seeming uncertain of what to do, before a fourth walked up from the rear and brought the butt of his gun down, hard, on the back of her head. Already gasping from breathing the gas and the physical exertion, she crumpled.

One of the henchmen threw her over his shoulder, and the masked convoy emerged from the gas-clouded hallway into clearer air. The Joker pulled off his gas mask and surveyed the main room of the police station, the bodies and the blood scattered around it. "Grab a cop while you're at it," he commanded the masked henchmen who stood awaiting his orders. "And make sure they're still breathing; can't use a corpse as a hostage."

Then he smiled to himself, not so much at the gruesome witicism, but at the whole scope of the carnage surrounding him. The mob bosses left alive after Batman failed to stop the detonation of the assassin's bomb owed him now, not only for keeping them safe while most of the region's competing crime lords were eliminated, but for arranging the capture of the assassin who would have gone after the survivors next. Sure, they'd be a little angry at him for attacking the Gotham City Police Department on their own turf and forcing them to retaliate by cracking down on the seedier parts of Gotham—but not angry enough to pull their support of him. By this time everyone, including the mob, knew that you had to be crazy to oppose the Joker.

Soon it would be time to find out just how crazy Nigma, Gordon, and the general populace of Gotham City really were.

As always critiques are very welcome! For those interested, my coauthor and I are projecting this to end up totalling around 22 chapters.