Chapter Text
The high-pitched creak of the old lab door echoed throughout the room. Mia crouched, as still and quiet as possible, behind a table as the security guard's flashlight pointed back and forth across the room.
After a few seconds, the floor boards groaned, the door creaked again, and Mia found herself sighing in relief at the sound of the guards fading footsteps down the hall.
She slowly got up and methodically checked all the pockets in her DIY belt bags and backpack, double-checking that she would leave no evidence behind.
The map? Check.
Her own map of Gotham? Check.
Pencil? Check.
Mini first aid kit? Check.
Cash? Check.
Water bottle? Check.
Batarang she definitely did not steal from a crime scene? Check.
Satisfied, Mia started to carefully creep across the lab and out the door, double-checking that the security guard had gone to his other floor for the next few minutes, and made her way to the library. She'd just have to take a closer look at the map later.
gotham academy's library was, first and foremost, for showing off. It was where student orientation was held, where reward ceremonies took place, and was the favorite spot amongst teachers for parent-teacher conferences. It's ornate tables and tall shelves screamed of wealth, but they also made for great hiding spots. The room was so big that one librarian couldn't keep track of every student, and the cleaners only cleaned the first part of the room that would be shown to guests. There were other rooms in the library though, like study rooms 1–8 that Mia checked on every day.
Really, study room number 8 was her favorite. It was the least frequented by students and staff alike, because of the distance to the door, but she didn't really get a choice on which table people would leave notes on.
She also wasn't entirely sure why people left her notes on these tables at all. It was probably because of the pre-existing rumors about ghosts haunting them — there were a lot of ghost stories about Gotham academy—she had only found the first note by accident when trying to study.
As Mia reached the study rooms, she saw a piece of paper folded up in room number 6.
It was from one of her classmates, Audrey, who had her job go missing. Audrey's family owned a cosmetics business, one of the smaller ones in Gotham, and Audrey did a lot of hair and makeup modeling work in her own section. She had gotten an email from some newer photography and magazine company, Cat&Co, about a new line of products made specifically for red heads.
This was pretty common for many richer teenage girls in Gotham, what wasn't common was for that new company to up and disappear overnight.
According to the note, hastily scribbled on the back of a tardy slip, Audrey had been going to their building after school all week. She would show up, decide between a few color schemes or patterns or backgrounds for photos that were supposed to happen at the end of the week, leave, and then do the same all over again the next day.
When she came back for the last day though, there was nothing even in the building aside from a 'for rent' sign in the window.
Audrey went on to write that she couldn't find the company's website anymore, and all their emails had been deleted.
It was definitely one of Mia's weirder mysteries, one she could see herself really throwing herself into and just forgetting about the world for a bit, but also one that would have to be thought of more later.
After folding up the paper and putting it in her pocket, as well as checking that there were no other notes, she made her way out of the library. As she slowly—but quicker than when she started!—travelled down the front hall and towards one of the many exits, Mia let her mind drift back towards her first mystery of the night, the map.
The drawings the blacklight had revealed were simple, and in a similar style as the already visible lines, but they still confused her a bit.
The map seemed to be detailing different paths in a cave system, with entrances and landmarks labeled in invisible ink. She had known that Gotham had some extensive caves, but had never looked into them enough to recognize a map of one. The entrances had notable landmarks around Gotham, like the library, Robinson park, and a few restaurants. The thing that interested her most was the drawing inside the biggest cave, bats.
It could just be that there were literally bats inside the cave, but it was drawn in the same style as the Batman logo. Could this have something to do with the city's vigilantes?
Mia had reached the door by now, and started to creep across the lawn. If someone wanted to lure her, as maps, somewhere, it would make sense to assume she had an interest in the local heroes and would be willing, and curious enough, to follow the map to that location.
If someone had somehow tied her, as Mia, back to maps, which wouldn't be difficult, she was not nearly careful enough in the beginning, then they would definitely know that she was obsessed with the bats enough to go looking into that cave system. Either way, following this map could easily put her in danger.
But what if someone else is in danger?
What if some student had been taken and held for ransom, and left this note as a cryptic clue for her to find? She'd helped with kidnapping cases before, but why would the kidnapper themselves contact her of all people? did they think she was actually working with the bats? It wasn't uncommon to hear rumors about maps being a more secret robin of sorts, but why would a kidnapper want to contact them anyway? Mia hadn't heard of any kidnappings recently, but maybe she'd missed one? Or maybe it wasn't a Girham academy kid at all? Was the bat symbol supposed to represent the batcave?
There were too many questions pacing around miss head, slowly but methodically going around in circles until she'd picked apart every last detail. With each step away from her school and toward the woods just outside it, a plan formed.
First, she would treat this new case with Audrey as a priority, there was just more to work with. Second, she would go into the cave systems, but only once she had more knowledge and safety gear. She tried to keep an open mind about who might have sent the map, and why, and mentally placed the whole thing to the side.
By the time she came to this conclusion, mia had made it through the forest and into town. As soon as she could, she climbed to the top of a building, and began jumping from rooftop to rooftop until she reached the building Audrey had said she'd been going to each day.
Traveling by rooftop was something she'd seen Batman and Robin do when she was younger, and naively tried to recreate it on a diy parkour course in her backyard before sneaking out and trying it with actual buildings. She fell a lot at first, but the gymnastics and fencing classes she'd been in most her life really helped.
Once she'd landed on the roof of the store directly across from the one Audrey had described, a simple and easily missed building, Mia took a picture. If this case grew to be more complicated, she'd pin this picture, along with the note and any other pictures, on the corkboard surface behind her mirror to connect with red yarn and stay up too late looking at.
Satisfied with the photographs quality, Mia crept across the street and around to a back alley entrance. it was easy to avoid the few security cameras in the area, and even easier to pick the lock on the vacant storefront.
The inside was about what she had expected, empty. There was a simple waiting area, a small bathroom, and a handful of smaller rooms in the back. Other than the sign with the homeowners contact information and some chairs left abandoned in the waiting room, there really wasn't anything to investigate.
Disappointed but not surprised, Mia jotted down the owner's phone number and email before creeping back out and towards Robinsons park.
The park itself was technically owned and grown by Poison Ivy, and as such was usually avoided by locals, but Mia knew that Ivy wasn't one to hurt kids, and used that information to have a safe spot amongst the ever-expanding flowers, vines, and trees. Being a 15-year-old girl wandering around Gotham wasn't the safest thing ever, but if you acted confident enough and hung out in a known rogues 'home' people usually left you alone.
as mia sat down on the soft grass beneath a massive lavender plant, she began to research. Mia didn't like being overdependent on technology, not when she could just use the public library's computers and have an excuse to leave the house, but it was nice having her own laptop in her bag while out doing detective work past library closing times.
First, she looked up the owners of the building, then found the address of their office and learned that not only was it small enough to not have very good security, but it was also just a few blocks away. She would have also liked to start looking into cave exploring equipment, but figured that would be better done when she had more time and energy.
After checking the time, still about an hour before she had to be back at the bus stop, Mia packed up her laptop, dusted the dirt off her pants, and started towards the next clue.