~A/N: My intention with this story is to develop a darker Riddler than DC's interpretation. His history differs from that of the comics and things obviously take a turn for the worst...bear with me on his apparent sarcasm. ;)
Title: Twenty Questions
POV: First person, Riddler
Characters: Riddler, Black Mask, Batman and a whole slew of unfortunate pawns.
Rating: Err...Teen for safety's sake. There will be blood. And violence. And a bit of harsh language...
Disclaimer: I don't own DC. I'm just daydreaming...
Spoilers: If you've watched Batman Begins and the Dark Knight, you're good to go. I'm running with the whole "origins" theme Nolan seems to favour. If you know about the comics, that's great, but I'll properly introduce anyone I add to the story from the DC universe.
Summary: The rise of a peculiar villain with a thing for riddles and his subsequent descent into darkness.
"I've seen worse."
Officer McLoughlin shot me a sceptical look over the rim of his glasses.
It was the usual song-and-dance between us.
The man scrutinized me for a moment before shaking his head in obvious disappointment. With a heavy sigh, he slipped another page into the file on his desk and began the tedious chore of filling out the report for tonight's fiasco.
I shifted a little to one side on my seat, trying to find a comfortable position in the straitjacket despite its snug fit—snug in the sense that it was a little more than just irksome. Slight men shouldn't have trouble breathing in these things. Ever. And if I was complaining, I could only imagine how the burlier inmates of Arkham Asylum must have suffered over the years...
I probably made a face just then because Officer Lovell stopped his pacing long enough to glance my way in the holding cell. While I knew they thought of me as an oppugnant criminal, I was a far cry from being another Joker, and my tendencies toward breaking the law were passive in comparison to what the Clown Prince of Crime would like to call a night out on the town. It was, perhaps, for this reason that the men deemed it safe enough to speak plainly with me when I was locked securely behind bars.
Besides, they had half an hour to kill before Arkham's guards arrived.
"What's worse?"
"...I'm sorry?"
Lovell took a step over to McLoughlin's desk and sat against the corner like a pro, arms and ankles crossed like a 1940s star from a detective flick. Then he sighed, much the same way McLoughlin had. "You said, you've seen worse."
"Considerably."
"...Care to elaborate, Nygma?"
I could hear the curiosity behind the exasperation in his voice. It's why I loved the boys in blue—when Batman failed to entertain me, they were always eager to step up to plate. "I don't suppose it would make much sense to you. After all, each man weighs life according to his own trials and tribulations." I shifted again in my seat. "And besides, what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve."
Both McLoughlin and Lovell gave me a wary look.
It was disheartening.
"That was idiom," I clarified quietly. "Not a riddle..."
And as far as I could see, the GPD had a batting average of zero.
...
I hated sports.
"Did you fall off the roof before or after the Bat clocked you?" McLoughlin asked, disrupting the awkward silence as he started another sheet for his report. He couldn't hide the subtle curl at the corner of his lips.
I had no doubt they found my capture amusing.
I thought about it for a moment and frowned. The side of my face smarted just thinking about it. "He hit me afterwards...And I didn't fall off the roof."
"Of course," Lovell smiled. "You glided."
No, 'glided' wasn't the word for it. I was yanked off by a grappling hook—and being tossed from one building to another did not constitute as falling either. In the seven months that I had tormented Gotham City, I'd never taken a dive quite like that before.
Seven months...had it really been that long?
"Do you want to hear a riddle?"
"No."
I cringed at the unified answer but tried to shrug it off. It's not as though I could kill someone with words alone. "Well—what do you want to hear?"
"How about a story?" Lovell joked.
I glanced at the clock on the far wall. I had until eight...
Then he would be here.
And wouldn't that be gong show? The boys in blue battling the infamous False Facers under the command of Roman Sionis—it would be another black streak in the history of Gotham City, a massacre of sorts that I didn't necessarily want to see.
The good old boys didn't know it yet, but tonight was far from over...
"Alright," I said, clearing my throat. "It all began in March, after an apparently important meeting that I intentionally missed..."
McLoughlin and Lovell gave me a different look then, one of unadulterated surprise. I'd only been to Arkham once before and in the brief week that they entertained me as a guest I'd managed to drive Dr. Knox mad with my antics. He didn't care why a welder was like a woman in love, or how an orange was like a bell—he wanted clues about my past and answers to why I suddenly took a dive off the deep end (—his words, not mine). As simple as it would've been to just tell him, I firmly believed there was nothing wrong with me.
And I never lied.
Ever.
Which is probably why my gumshoe companions were eager to hear the truth.
I gave them a moment to voice any complaints and, having been met with silence, continued. "I recently returned from a conference in Chicago and was expected to explain why I suddenly pulled the plug on our project..."
~March 3rd, 2009~
"He's going to kill you, Eddie."
The incessant click-click-click of Dr. Hubert's stiletto shoes was going to kill me sooner. It was enough to drive anyone mad. I tried to quicken my pace in hopes of changing the rhythm (at the very least) but the infernal woman merely countered by taking longer strides.
"He's said as much before," I argued. "If my death is truly foremost on his mind, I'm sure I won't live long enough to regret my actions."
"Mistakes," she corrected.
Tilting my head a little to one side, I offered her a smile of faux kindness. "Actions."
With an irritated huff, she grabbed my arm and tried to hang on as I turned a corner sharply. She didn't seem the least bit fazed when I shrugged her off. "Goddamnit—just listen to me, Nashton! This is huge! Do you have any idea how much funding we could have?"
"A lot," I muttered.
"Not if you keep trying to undermine us!"
"Please explain to me how the word 'undermine' fits into this conversation. If I'm the one that engineered this chemical, how is it I'm the only one that hasn't felt the repercussions of calling the deal off?"
"You will," she warned, reaching for my arm again. Satisfied that she was starting to lose her breath, I side-stepped out of her grasp. "Just stop and think about this for a second! Kord Enterprises is huge. With this technology—"
"Amy, my dear, I wouldn't trust this research with a little, old grandmother. Do you honestly believe I would let Dr. Norm run amuck with it?"
Dr. Norm, of course, was my supervisor, a sickly, fifty-something-year-old that was alarming obese and utterly obsessed with the minute success of his football fanatic son. Said son was a thirty-two-year-old high school dropout that somehow managed to squeeze his way onto a farm team in hopes of making it big someday. Being just as delusional as ever, Dr. Norm, of course, would never admit to the stupidity of this ideal and firmly believed that anyone who was both younger than his son and held no interest in sports whatsoever was a complete idiot.
Namely me.
Which, admittedly, baffled me to no end...
"But it's your research!" Dr. Hubert shrieked. "You've spent the last three years working on it. You just can't discard it."
Technically, I could. And I would.
As soon as I could figure out how.
Which would take a while...
And a lot of screaming on Norm's behalf...
All the same, Brumalium wasn't exactly the pot of gold I expected to find at the end of my proverbial rainbow. Being young and hopeful, I thought, perhaps, it would be interesting (and useful in some strange, pacific way) to engineer a chemical that was limited to melting through inorganic materials. True to at least one of my goals, Brumalium was only active in liquid form at room temperature and could be successfully stored when frozen. Ironically, though, Brumalium didn't just melt through metal. It melted through everything.
Instantly.
If 100 grams was heated on a solid block of iron five feet tall, it could burn a hole through it in three seconds flat. Curious, we tested it on anything we could get our hands on (within reason) and my hopes took a turn for the worst when wood joined the list.
Dr. Hubert (on one of my days off) thought it would be fun to test it on a mouse.
Then something bigger (though I won't tell you what).
Afterwards, she told Dr. Norm Brumalium was ready for the real world—it would be the new 'atomic bomb' of the 21st Century. And it was. Dr. Norm came up with a small list of big name companies to share the secret with and penned down a meeting in New York on the 1st of March. He sent me an invoice and kindly informed me that I had finally done something meaningful in life.
On the 1st of March, I made sure I was in Chicago, sitting in on a presentation about elastomers. Afterwards, I sent him an email, turned off my cell phone, and worked on a crossword book for the remainder of the day. When he got a hold of me, I found out that he was incensed not only because I had missed the meeting, but because he thought, perhaps, I had gone to someone else in Gotham with the research.
In my defence, the riddle I left in the email wasn't all that difficult.
Anyone who couldn't figure out "Where Adler and Abraham meet" obviously didn't know squat about Chicago.
That, or they hadn't the slightest idea how to use Google.
"Eddie..." Dr. Hubert began to slow behind me, tiring of the chase. Her voice was a softer now, trying a new tactic to plead with me. "Don't do this...please."
I shook my head. It wasn't only that I was against the idea of creating something that could cause immeasurable damage in the wrong hands—it was because the concept of power had taken on a new meaning. Once upon a time, knowledge was power, and a quick wit was hailed more readily than the man with biggest, meanest club. People had no interest in challenges or genuine competitions anymore. All they cared about was efficiency.
It was enough to make me sick.
"Amy, would it be too much to ask for a little privacy right about now? I need to find an escape route before Norm finds me."
Which he did—the second I stepped into my office.
On a good day, Norm is just a little sardonic. The fellow has a perpetually blotted appearance and incredibly grey skin, something that I've pointed out to him on more than one occasion (and which has always fallen on deaf ears). When he breathes, it sounds as though he's trying to do a poor imitation of Darth Vader, and when he walks, I'm almost certain the vibrations register somewhere between 3.5 and 4.0 on the Richter Scale. When Dr. Hubert isn't in a foul mood herself (which is rare), she tends to agree that the man needs to go on a diet.
In short, Dr. Norm had enough meat on him to kill me with something as mediocre as a slap.
And when I saw him, I thought he was going to do just that.
"Cocky, little, good-for-nothing, son of a—"
It was times like these when Norm reminded me painfully of my father.
"I take it the meeting didn't go too well."
"You think?!" he hollered. My ears started ringing. "Lucius Fox was there, for god's sake! And do you have any idea how difficult it is to get the interest of Wayne Enterprises?!"
Ah, Wayne Enterprises—the goliath powerhouse behind research and development in our dear city. I'd never met Mr. Fox in person, but I knew by way of Wayne Enterprise's comings and goings that the man chose his projects carefully. Seeing that we were a small group of chemical engineers working under the university's stringent eye, making good company with the Wayne Chemicals could lead to endless funding in future endeavours.
"I imagine it would be exceedingly difficult," I replied finally.
I never thought it was possible before, but Norm actually turned red. I heard Dr. Hubert shift warily behind me.
For a moment, I contemplated the consequences of running.
Then again—everyone who knew about Brumalium also knew that I was the one responsible for its pitiful existence. If Norm killed me, he would have nothing to gain. I would take the secret of a manageable, highly corrosive substance with me to my grave.
Together, Dr. Hubert and I watched quietly as Norm faded gradually to his usual grey pallor. After a moment or two, he actually looked calm.
I think that frightened me more than anything else.
"You don't want to sell it?" he asked eventually, sounding genuinely confused. "You'd be as rich as that billionaire brat, Bruce Wayne."
Money was alluring (I was normal man in that respect), but the real reward was victory, the knowledge of being the best.
Which was why I going to stick to my guns in this situation.
"No...I think it would be for the best if we abandoned this endeavour."
He nodded, stared at a spot on the wall beside my head for about a second and then pursed his lips. "But you're still going to work on it, aren't you?"
"Yes, until I get it right. But I need to iron out a few kinks first."
Like the fact that knocking a block of Brumalium around was just as bad as warming it to room temperature. If you kicked it hard enough it you ran the risk of losing your foot.
Dr. Norm seemed to be coming to terms with this idea. "I think...I think I need to sit down somewhere." He wobbled toward the door—but stopped halfway to squint at me. "Get cracking, Nashton. If you don't come up with another miracle, I don't know what I'm going to do to you..."
"Will do, sir."
The man began muttering to himself but he had nothing more to say to me. After he disappeared into the hallway, I released the breath I'd been holding and turned to Amy.
She looked devastated.
"...You're such a fool, Eddie."
"Do you remember that Joker fellow?"
Amy made a face and frowned wearily at me. "Yeah...Who could forget him?"
"Exactly. Or how about the panic attack orchestrated by that psychiatrist from Arkham Asylum? It was hell on earth...for Gotham, anyway. Do you really want some megalomaniac to get his hands on Brumalium?"
Amy pursed her lips (very much the same way Norm did) and chose silence over the prospect of starting another argument with me. I always rose to the challenge when provoked.
Shaking her head, she headed for the door and click-click-click-ed her way down the hall to her own office. I waited to hear her door slam before closing my own.
It felt good to be right...
But like all egotistical academics, I thought this was the end of my troubles—that I could grab the bull by the horns and turn the situation around.
And like all absentminded men, I had no idea Wayne Enterprises wasn't the only powerhouse interested in Brumalium.
That was when Roman Sionis entered the scene.
A/N: "Where Adler and Abraham meet" refers to Chicago. 'Adler' because of the Adler Planetarium and 'Abraham' because of the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago where Abraham Lincoln won the vote to become the Republican candidate for that year's election.
Additionally, both "why is a welder was like a woman in love" and "how is an orange was like a bell" are both riddles from the 1960s Batman television show.