The night seemed calm enough. A breeze whispered gently through the trees under the pale moonlight. The cloud cover was light, letting stars shine through it to brighten the warm spring night sky. Yet, even the most peaceful of nights in Gotham City were never as they appeared.

Disregarding the late hour, lights shined from one bedroom window in a particularly lush suburb. The occupant of the room relaxed on her soft, spacious double bed, books in her lap, papers strewn about her on the comforter. She looked to be concentrating hard on whatever was before her on the pages of the book she had open, but her eyes merely stared past the writing, her thoughts distracted by something else.

Out of nowhere, the bedroom door violently burst open, a tall figure flying though it, not hesitating to approach the girl on her bed. Before she could register the presence of the man coming towards her, she was thrown backward off the bed along with her school papers, her cheek numb from impact. She glared angrily at the man jumping over the bed to hit her again as she reactively held her bruised cheek. His fist raised, aiming once again at her face, but this time she caught the punch and with well-practiced skill tossed the bulky man over her head. He crashed hard into the wall, shaking a picture from where it hung, glass shattering as it hit the ground near where the man now lay.

The girl stood to recompose herself, holding back the tears that welled in her eyes from the burning pain spreading in her cheek. The smell of alcohol on the man’s breath wafted up to her. She hoped he was drunk enough that the blow knocked him completely unconscious, but he stirred slightly after a few moments, confirming that he was only temporarily stunned. A few moans of pain came from the man as he struggled to pull himself upright. His not-so-helpless victim stood over him with arms crossed, knowing he wouldn’t get the better of her again.

Through foggy eyes he looked at her with rage. Threateningly, he slurred, “Lennon Crystal Johnson...”

“What, Richard?” she half-laughed scornfully. “You going to try and come at me again? You’re too drunk to stand on your own two feet, and you know I could kick your ass while you’re sober.”

“You little ungrateful bitch. One of these days, I’ll make sure you get yours.”

“Try all you like, Father, but Harvey’s campaign to knock you out of your secure little place in the underworld is already backing you into a corner. After the trial this Thursday, you’ll have nowhere you can run from the police…or Batman.” An evil grin spread across Lennon’s face as her taunting worked to anger her drunk father.

“Damn you and damn Dent!” he screamed as he clumsily stood up to face her. “I should kill you both!”

“You do that. They’ll just add murder to the hundreds of other charges against you.”

In a fury, Richard lunged to strike her again. Deciding finally to put him out of his misery, Lennon blocked it and countered it with a forceful punch of her own to his jaw. His two hundred pounds of dead weight fell with a resounding thud as he hit the carpet once again. She carelessly dragged her father out of her room and tossed him down the hallway of the second-story of their mansion. She went back inside, shutting the door behind her and locking it this time.

Lennon sighed deeply as she picked up her homework and reassembled it on her bed. She stared at the Trigonometry problems blankly. Math homework was the last thing she wanted to do.

Lennon walked over to her gorgeously crafted mahogany dresser, observing the bruise on her cheek, already turning a sickly shade of purple. She touched it gingerly, wincing from the pain. Yet bruises were nothing new to her, and neither was the sting of her father’s words. Every day of the seventeen years of her life had been the same. Hurt, pain, humiliation, anger – they were feelings Lennon forced herself to come to terms with to keep whatever sanity she had intact.

Her father, criminal defense lawyer Richard Johnson, had more power and influence in Gotham’s underworld than most could imagine, and he used every bit of it he could to keep the mobs thriving. Still, he was only one spoke in the wheel of corruption that plagued the bayside city. Turmoil sprouted from the top rungs of the city’s government and bubbled over all the way down to the streets. The problem was that from the outside, the rotten core of Gotham City wasn’t visible, because those in power, like her father, left no trace of their underhanded dealings. Only the lackeys at the bottom of the cesspool ever got pinned for crimes.

Everyone in Gotham was touched by the permeation of the underworld, and very few stayed pure. Lennon, though so close to the source of corruption, was one of these never pulled in, and she owed it all to Gotham’s Assistant District Attorney, Harvey Dent. Young and idealistic, Harvey acted as Lennon’s mentor and parent as she grew up, keeping her from the lure of her biological father’s world. Richard made her pay for her stand against him with his never-ending abuse.

Lennon observed herself in the mirror one last time, thinking of how much make-up it would take to cover the bruise the next day for school. Then she remembered the homework she still had to finish. Sticking her tongue out in disgust at no one in particular, she decided to just forget her homework and move onto other things. She was too restless to concentrate on math. She only hoped she wouldn’t regret it later.

P A N T H E R E T T E