"Is that natural or are you some kind of meta?" 

Rose Wilson is unprepared for such a query, especially since most people are afraid to talk to her around Crime Alley. They all know who her father is.

Her shock grows even more so when she turns to see the notorious dealer Cece Jermaine sitting on the stool behind her, a shot pouring mist over the counter in front of her.

Caught like a deer in the headlights, Rose blurts the lamest thing possible, "You're Cece Jermaine."

"I am."

Cece, long sleek black hair gracefully falling over her back, swivels around to face Rose who is leaning over the counter. Rose feels impressively deflated when she takes in the other villain's assets- sharp blue eyes, flawless skin, bare minimal clothing revealing a plunging cleavage.

The white-haired girl doesn't know where to look. At the blindingly reflecting leather the dealer is wrapped in? The path up those impossibly long legs? 

"I guess you're Rose," she says, and somehow her accent and voice makes her even more attractive.

"Yeah..." Rose trails off. Her father's reputation has likely proceeded her. 

The bar sits near the centre of CA and hosts the worst of the worst. Joker's men order their drinks from here, Penguin's finest scotch is held there, and Harvey Dent can often be found in the corner glowering.

"Aren't you underage?" She presses, and Rose has backed away now, slightly afraid, because everyone has heard things and Slade isn't there to speak for her.

Cece's eyes flicker to the barmaid, just as trashily dressed as anyone in Crime Alley.

She jerks her chin at her, "Trixie, serve Rose here a drink."

Without so much as a glance at Rose herself, 'Trixie' pours a shot and places it in front of the stool beside Cece. Rose nervously strides towards it and seats herself there. The last thing she wants to do is fall off in front of the inhabitants of the bar.

"W-What is this?" She asks, cursing herself for stuttering.

"Vodka," Cece answers, downing it like it's nothing, "Try it."

Without arguing Rose brings the shot glass to her lips. This isn't her first shot, but somehow it feels like it is. She tosses her head back and fights every urge to gag as the sharp taste burns against her tongue and throat.

When she swallows it, then inhales, she finally curls in to cough. She expects to be laughed at, to be ridiculed, but when she glances up at Cece from behind a curtain of white hair the dealer is merely nodding at her.

"Another," she tells Trixie.

However, there are others who noticed her choke. In most other bars the drunk attendees would cheer, or not even notice, but not in this establishment.

"Look at that," one thug, sporting an English accent resembling Penguin's top lieutenants shouts from the corner table, "Slade's kid can't even hack it!"

In the second that Rose contemplates a biting response to holler back, Cece reaches over the counter, snatches a cork screw from Trixie's hand and tosses it through the bar.

Everyone seems to go silent the moment it embeds itself in the heckler's neck. His head snaps back as he gurgles on his own blood, desperately clawing at the fountain bursting from the fatal wound.

In that bar in particular a death is a weekly occurrence. The first person to laugh is, in fact, Rose, who watches in delight as the man who dare tease her falls to the floor. Eventually the other patrons return to drinking and glowering at each other. Trixie's co-worker, a particularly shady looking individual, is happy to clean up the mess and dispose of the body.

With the ice somewhat broken, Rose turns back to the bar with a renewed view of Cece Jermaine. 

"What brings you to Gotham?" She asks boldly. 

Cece doesn't seem to care as she takes a sip of her new drink, "People owed me money."

"Kill anyone?"

"'Couple guys," she responds. Rose watches curiously as she reaches into her pocket and produces a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, "And you?"

"Just something my dad had to do," she says bitterly.

Cece waves her hand, "We don't have to talk about him if you don't want to."

This clearly surprises Rose, who Cece knows is no stranger to people using her for getting information about her father.

In reality Cece is more interested in Slade's body and heart than the information. She knows enough about him already.

Rose is to a degree naïve enough to desperately crave the attention of someone like Cece. As the night carries on this becomes more and more clear. Rose slowly opens herself up more and more until eventually, Cece is sure she is in.

◊

◊

The persona of Marissa Anders was destroyed by Bruce Wayne.

A contract to kill him was handed to Aphrodite. At the time she was a young and inexperienced with only two personas to use. One was Marissa Anders; a Gotham socialite with brown hair, brown eyes and a memorable fringe.

When the time came to kill Bruce Wayne, right after sleeping with him, the playboy pulled some frightening moves and had Aphrodite on her back- not in the way she prefers.

Years later, with a new look, story and name, she can be back where Marissa once was.

As she stares at Bruce Wayne from across the room, she continues the trend of avoiding him. Though they had shared some words and are a part of the same circle, the further away she stays, the better.

So she glances away from him and continues to walk through the Wayne Foundation gala at Wayne Hotels alone, obtaining her all-business-no-bullshit attitude.

Every now and then her phone (one of them, she has six) buzzes with a message from Rose Wilson. It's Cece's phone, but Alice has it in a simple white case instead of Cece's black spiky one to avoid suspicion. 

Soon. Soon, Rose will ask Cece if she wants to come over. Until then Silva will remain as Alice, pretending to have any care for the Wayne Foundation.

When it gets boring and she is sure she has spoken to everyone, her attention goes to the bar, where she requests a glass of the most expensive champagne. Cece would get a beer or a shot. Ginny would get a fruity cider. Liliana, who she has not been in a while, would ask for a soda.

Silva would get a bourbon.

Not that it matters. 

As she sips her sparkling poison looking a perfect picture, eyes catch hers from across the room. A shady looking man failing to hide his shadiness.

Alice recognises the type; someone not good enough to stand on their own, so they decide to be a part of a group. The League of Assassins he is not; Ra's al Ghul would have no interest in such a feeble looking man. A meta, perhaps, part of some cluster who stand together to equal one strength.

It appears this one is alone. And here to kill her.

Very calmly, she finishes her champagne and places the empty glass on the bar. She gives the tender a smile before heading outside for some 'air'.

There are scattered people on the balcony, but only outside the doors. Before Alice takes a turn to the empty side she fires a loop device at one of the cameras. It takes six seconds to function and in that time she makes sure no one sees her doing what she is doing.

Everyone is wrapped up in each other.

When the loop device begins repeating the same six seconds she heads around the corner onto the west-facing balcony. She sprints down to the next corner where west and north meet. 

In the same process she fires a loop device at the CCTV. The assassin should be following her now. 

When the device is done she steps around to the north side and waits.

Most assassins she would have to lure away and fight to the death. But this man, who clearly requires others to stand beside him to be worth anything, will be a piece of cake.

This is especially obvious when his thundering footsteps come storming down the west side, as she leans on the wall of the north.

Three, two, one. 

He does not know what is coming when he rounds the corner. Alice shoots her palm up into his nose, piercing the inside of his head with a few of his bones. He chokes, head tossing back in the second he reacts, which she takes to turn him.

Blood would make anyone suspicious, so she wraps an arm around his neck and pins him there, injecting him in the spine with her own special poison which takes effect immediately.

She does not know his powers, but when he tries to summon them into his hands they do not arrive. Her poison is one of a special kind. 

Despaired, he tries to fight back. And why wouldn't he- his windpipe is being crushed and black dots are invading his vision.

Alice simply holds on tight silently. As he struggles and bucks in her hold, dying, she contemplates her options of getting a dead body off of the roof. She has nothing to wrap him in, but she does have her line launcher and there is a perfectly camera-less office building rooftop in range.

She is so busy staring she barely notices when she twists hard enough for his neck to break. When she does, she drops him and takes her launcher from her unsuspicious bag.

With perfect aim in the night, Alice Kirkman fires a line to her target which embeds itself in the rooftop door. Satisfied, she hooks her deadman's belt onto the catch and sends him sailing his through the air, over the quiet streets where he comes to rest.

Like a fishing rod, she reels the line back. With Slade present in the city, a bat or bird will not pass by that spot until the early hours of the morning, so for a the few minutes it will take to reach him, he will be safe and unseen.

She slips down the side of the building, catching herself on the next floor's window- the women's bathroom, as planned. 

Unbothered by the height and the lack of safety she has hanging off of the window of a sky scraper, Alice Kirkman slips into the pretty toilet stall. It takes her thirty seconds to fix herself up and put back on her mask.

When she manages to escape the gala with a big smile and an entitled wave, she hurries to her car. Alice's car; a slick, white Auldi R8. When she climbs in and the tinted windows cover her from the world she still refuses to drop the act.

Very confidently, she drives all of one block from the Wayne Hotel over to the office building. Breaking inside is the easiest part of her quest. She heads upstairs with the equipment from her car in her arms, having to fire loops at every camera she sees. 

Each loop only lasts five minutes before it detaches and turns to dust. The ones on Wayne's balcony will be gone now.

When she gets to the roof he is waiting there for her, slumped and turning cold. Alice kneels down in her designer dress and lays out the thick roll of plastic. She searches his body and takes everything, then drags him onto the sheet and starts rolling.

Once encased like a fragile package, so covered only the shape implies that it is a person, she lifts him over her shoulder like a fireman and starts back down the staircase. 

He fits perfectly in the trunk of her car where she can forget about him for a little while.

Only when she is speeding through the empty Gotham streets away from Bruce Wayne's extravagant, pretty building, does she let go of her persona.

Who am I sleeping as? 

Alice Kirkman has a beautiful and stylish cliff-side house in the Gotham Hills. Ginny Sinclair lives in a modest apartment between suburbia and the city. Cece Jermaine lives on the topside of an aged townhouse in Southern Crime Alley. 

Resembling the night she has had, she opts for the most luxurious one. Silk sheets on a posturepedic mattress. A vast bedroom decorated white and grey with a view of the stars. Brand Derek Rose's finest sleepwear. Waking up to a full fridge suited to provide a wonderful breakfast.

Gotham Hills is a place for the families who have invested in Gotham Academy. A place for the rich who do not live here but pass through sometimes. 

Would they dip their golden toes into the muck of the most dangerous city in America?

No, they would reign from its throne.

Alice's garage- though the word seems far too rough for the clean-cut lines -opens upon her arrival. The disc she parks her car on rotates when she heads inside, turning her car back to the road so she does not have to back out like a chump.

In her pearl coloured bathroom she wipes away makeup from healthy tanned skin and brushes out curly blonde hair. As unfair to Ginny and Cece as it sounds, she likes being Alice. Who wouldn't?

She lay her head on the softest pillow in the world with her phone in hand. Before she slips off to sleep one last message from Rose Wilson brings a smile to her face.

Would you like to come over tomorrow?