No Down Time

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Even at home, the work of the Gotham Police seems to follow him. Commissioner Gordon had been home for about two hours now in his home office, reading through more cases that were filed and he had brought home with him. The room dimly lite by the lamp that sat on the desk were Gordon was now working. Just a few hours ago, Gordon had been doing just about the same thing at the Gotham City Police Department. More light was shed upon the desk as the laptop was glowing from the light of the screen.

Gordon was going back and forth between the paper file on the desk and the information on the laptop screen. The screen's light reflected on Gordon's glasses every time he looked over at it. Every now and then the sound of the spinney chair Gordon was sitting in, squeaked as he turned to grab another file to look at.

The files he was looking at were of reports of abnormal plant growths outside of some local factor's drainage systems and some similar cases of some plant growth else where. Quite a few at the police station questioned why Commissioner Gordon was wasting his time looking at these files. Some of the officers though these cases were of little important and filed just to make the people complaining happy that reports were on record. Commissioner Gordon figured the rookies would think nothing of these events, but Gordon always did a little investigating on unusual cases. Over the years, the events that occur in Gotham, never really surprised Gordon any more. Gotham has had all sorts of unexplainable events at times and of course the most unusual criminals. So, Gordon takes a bit of caution on new cases. Especially if there has been another case similar to it.

Gordon adjusted his glasses with his left hand as he looked over at the computer screen once again after looking at an open file on the desk. Something written within the case caught his eye and he looked back at the computer screen. The file on the desk was written about a week ago and the one on the computer was a report from today. It seems that the plants that were spotted growing outside the drainage system at a factory in the western part of Gotham, had grown at a miraculous rate within a week.

There was something strange about this. Gordon wondered if there were toxins in the water that could have caused the fast growth rate of the plants spotted there. But the strange thing about the plants was that no botanist in Gotham could identify the plants. It was starting to look like there was something fishy about these cases after all. Gordon leaned back in the chair and removed his glasses for a moment as he rubbed his eyes. Just then the sound of a door shutting could be heard echoing through out the silent house.

[k]

[/i] a college student. Barbara Gordon found more reward and happiness in her other extracurricular activities. She often wondered to herself what came first; was she a student first, and Batgirl second. Or Batgirl first and a student second? It changed everyday, she thought. Today had been a student-centric day, having been to college, and studied quite a bit. She couldn't remember the last time she'd just been Babs; just a normal, happy eighteen year old. No, Barbara, like her father, found it difficult to separate her two lives.

She was currently sat in her room, desk pushed against her wall, placed so she could easily scan the night sky incase of a Batsignal. With her father currently in the house nothing was going to take place without him having to actually leave the premises, thus she was relaxing and reading through an arduous textbook. As she read through she become increasingly aware of the noise in the room down the hall. She knew her father was still up, and her mind was beginning to wander from her textbook as she wondered what he was doing. Although James Gordon wasn't actually her father - he was, in fact, her uncle - she still called him dad. He might as well have been. He was more of a dad to her than her biological father had ever been. She knew he worked late; James Gordon was a hardworking man, to the point where Babs considered her father's devotion to his work borderline obsession. Then again, Babs thought, chewing lightly on her pen, men like that were prone to appear in her life.

Her curiousity finally getting the better of her, and her overwhelming desire to get her dad to finally put some work down made her rise from her chair. The sooner her dad went off to bed, she sooner she could sneak out relatively unnoticed to go on a patrol. She always felt like there was a large elephant in the room whenever her dad would mention something offhand - perhaps ask her what she'd been up to or making general conversation. Not much dad, I donned a suit, fought a man twice my size and helped Batman fill up your police cells - so how was your day? She was, without doubt, incredibly close to her dad, and it constantly plagued her, but that was the life she'd chosen to lead, but it still hurt to know she was always inches away from making a mistake, or slipping up, and then... Barbara shook the thought from her head, opening her bedroom door and walking down toward her father's. She knocked lightly first, but opened the door regardless of the reply.

"Hey," she smiled warmly. "Are you still looking over those reports?" Barbara asked. Something must have caught her dad's eye, something had to have made him take those reports home, made him pour relentlessly over them so late into the night. Now she was determined to find out what. Her curiousity was battling her intense desire to make her dad give it up for the night. One side was going to win. "Found anything?" she asked. She moved toward the computer, brightly lit in contrast to the darkness around her father, the single other light source being the table lamp. She looked at the report on the screen, reading it as fast as she could in a way that still allowed her brain to process the information. Now this was intriguing.[/ul]

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"Oh, hello Barbara," Gordon replied quickly, she had caught him by surprise. He had been focusing so hard on the information before him he had not taken notice to Barbara coming into the room at first. "Didn't think you were still awake." He smiled at Barbara as he leaned forward in his chair again.

"You guessed right," he said. It was no surprise to him though, that Barbara figured he was still looking over some police records. That's all he felt he always did any more on his hours after work. Gordon glanced over at screen for a moment and then back at Barbara, noticing she had gotten closer. He knew that she was probably trying to see what he was working on. Gordon looked back down at the computer, moving the mouse over the saved file and closed out the window. He then shut the computer screen. His hands moved away from the computer to the file that was open on his desk. Looking at the digital clock sitting across the room, Gordon saw how late it was. Maybe he should turn in for the night soon, and work more on this case in the morning. After all, the plants didn't seem to be going any where.

Gordon looked back down at the file before him and shifted through the papers until he came across a photo that was taken earlier that day. and sitting off to the left side of the file was a picture that was taken the other week where the plants had been spotted. He figured it wouldn't hurt to just say a bit about a case with these plants. "Actually, I did find something interesting...more strange though," Gordon said as he moved the pictures beside each other. "These photos were both taken a week apart from each other. It's strange how fast those plants grew within a weeks time, isn't it?"

The first photo was a picture of a factory drainage system with some small plants growing at the base of it. Then the photo next to it showed that same drainage system, with the plants. But the plants were noticeably taller. One would think these photos were taken about a month apart, but in truth it had only been a week and the plants were growing faster than weeds do.

((ooc: sorry for the short post. running late for work.))

[k]

[/b] she replied. Exams were closing in on her and she couldn't afford to waste any time doing meaningless things. This had come to include sleep recently, and she was beginning to realise how irritable lack of sleep could make someone. Very, apparently. In between college she was Batgirl, and when she wasn't patrolling she was at college or studying. She'd caught herself drifting off to sleep during lessons, and she was worrying herself. It meant she'd just have to up her daily intake of caffeine and try to keep herself awake. She was running on a few hours of sleep, just enough to operate, but she often felt so removed from the real world because of it all.

Babs looked across at her father when he closed the window, but it was too late - Babs had already read it and taken a very detailed mental image in her mind. She possessed a good photographic memory, and the information in the report was already stored away. The next bit of information her father was about to feed her would only fuel her interest in this case. She glanced at the two pictures - the plant had grown exceedingly fast, abnormally so. This was definitely a case indeed, perhaps not one for her father and the police, but one for her and her comrades. She took the photos from her father, looking down at them looking at any sign of a disturbance in the ground that could indicate that the plant had been placed there in a very clever hoax. If anyone had dug the plant in they'd done it too well, Babs thought. The ground around it seemed undisturbed. The only explanation was simply that the plant had indeed grown there at an alarming rate. This wasn't the only one either - her dad's desk seemed to be littered with case files of a similar ilk.

Factory drainage systems, ah, Babs thought. Sounded like an extreme eco-fighter, she pondered. But how could they be growing so fast? It defied logic. Then again, Babs was growing used to anything that defied all means of logic. She decided not to share her thoughts with her father and made a note to check out the place later when she went on patrol.
"Weird," she said, putting the photos down on the desk. "Now go to bed. You have work tomorrow," she reminded him, scolding him gently for staying up so late.



OOC: sorry it's short.[/ul]

[Deleted]

Gordon placed the photos back in the case files he had dug them out of. As he started to put some of the other papers in there files, he responded to Barbara comment on how the case was weird. "It most certainly is weird. Of course, knowing some of these factories, there could be a chemical in the water causing these plants to grow so quickly. But these plants didn't just end up there by nature. It's hard to understand how someones could get that close to the toxic waters though," he thought out loud.

That was one of the things that was puzzling him. He knew there was probably some type of chemicals coming from the factory and into the water. But knowing these large companies they were probably following some type of legal loophole they found in the laws against chemical waste. And there were probably some politicians supporting the works in some of these factories. That just how things ran in Gotham. If companies could get away with something with a higher-ups support, they would try and do what they can against the law to save money for themselves. It was often hard to get any cases though on these companies since they would be ruled out. Gordon hated it when the companies would be getting away with dumping chemical waste into waters or trying to bury it to hide what they are doing. It was always a danger to the health of land around the companies. It seems the only way the city would actually take care of these companies was when it starts to really affect the people of Gotham. and that was a huge problem, Gordon did not want to see it get that far.

Gordon smiled lightly and gave a small chuckle at Barbara's last comment. She was right about it being late, and he did need sleep to make it through another day at the office. It was just the way she was, always looking out for him as much as he did for her. "Alright, but don't you stay up too late either," he said as he stacked the reports on the center of the desk and started to head for the door. He stopped and kissed Barbara on the forehead. "Night," he said as he headed for the door once again.