It's not about winning Gotham over. Just keeping it standing.
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"Alegría! Alegría! Alegría!' It's Spanish for 'Joy! Joy! Joy!' Where I come from, it's what you say when you're in pain. It means life goes on."
- Franco Dragone, Cirque du Soleil
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Cirque d'Alegrĩa
Chapter One
?
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Light, small, soft and golden, flares in the darkness to caress his hunched form and matchstick-pinching fingers. The orange glow and shadows carve his face into a Jack o' Lantern, yet this is not his alias.
The torch ran out a while ago but he is not finished, not yet. There is a ritual that must come first, a muttering of nonsense words and interrogations, whether for luck or sanity or to keep the devil at bay even he does not know. Time is ticking away, pouring down the hourglass; the candles shrivel as their essence disappears into the ether moment by moment. His mind turns to time keeping. He tries to keep it on track; he is not in control of this runaway train.
"Which civilisation created the first calendar? How did Egypt measure time? What flower blooms in the small hours after three am? How long until detonation?"
His voice is fast, quiet, monotonous. There is little emotion because the questions and their answers are more important than such sentiments – occasionally he brays, cheers in a rich, careless tone like the false congratulations of a game show host.
Seconds are escaping him. Minutes dwindle. He had left extra hours for this scenario but they are being consumed by the necessary rites. A bad habit he can't kick, if it doesn't stop soon he'll blow up in a WHOOMPH of fire and ash and smoke and destruction; but he is equally certain that if he breaks this chain of soothing, protective, controllable right-or-wrong questions and answers too soon, everything will go wrong.
Wires, innocent and childish in primary colours, are trailed and scattered all over the floor and walls and ceiling of the basement, a giant cat's cradle. They connect a ragtag bundle of explosives and triggers and splaying strands of copper. An oil drum here, a bar of dynamite there, a small quantity of putty designed for the detrimental games of adults is plastered across a battered row of lockers. As much as he can scrape together under the new, stricter regulations of Gotham. There will be no more blowing up of hospitals. No more anonymous bulk buying of cheap and inflammable substances. However, whether this will deter the deranged or passionate villains of the City remains to be seen. If it takes a little longer to gather the puzzle pieces, no matter. If the jigsaw never comes together, never shows its true colours…well…that would be unforgivable.
"What's the biggest jigsaw in the world? What image does it present? Who has the fastest time for completion of a 3D jigsaw in the World Records book? What is the etymology of the word jigsaw? Which company is the biggest manufacturer of jigsaws to date? What was your first jigsaw? -No, that's not right. Do I remember a thing like that? If I don't know, I lose. The million dollar prize. The big kaboom. Badaboom. Badaboom. A quotation from which film released in 1997? I don't have time for this. I can't let this fail. Why? Why. Why?"
He pulls a green biro from his pocket and writes the question mark on his palm like a reminder. It joins a thousand fellows. Biro, felt tip, gel pen, marker, paint. They march across his white shirt, crowning his red-haired head, clustering in acid and emerald on his arms, slashing over his wrists like a dubious self-harmer. Queries are tattooed into his skin, tattooed into his mind, almost every word he speaks ends with an upwards enquiring note, and his thoughts spin round and round in an eternal internal Wheel of Fortune.
Illuminated crimson lines are flickering on and off on the master-detonator. They are dancing towards his doom. Or so long as his luck and genius holds out, only dancing towards the funeral pyre of another broadcast building. It's the fourth victim in his vendetta against television stations. It may appear to be an out-of-hand obsession but the 'Riddler' always knows what's going on. He is in control, he knows the answer, he alone is aware of the escape route. No one else can pose the questions to best him, so for a long while now he has been challenging himself. It is a private game but the police have been poking their noses in – too many public buildings have gone 'poof'.
Does the sphinx's heart pound so unbearably when she is facing her foe?
"The average resting rate of a human's heartbeat is a) seventy five beats b) one hundred beats c) fifty two beats. A mouse's heart beats how many times per hour? Is it true that most organic life forms with a cardiac system share a similar number of heart beats over their lifespan? Is the frequency of beats related to species or body mass? What does the CPR in medical emergencies stand for? Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Who performed the first heart transplant?"
Looking at the digital clock's countdown, there are much fewer seconds left than anticipated. Possibly even less than he needed to get out. Instead of making a move towards the cellar door the thin, middle-aged man began to measure and calculate would he should do – rather than take the steps he needed to take. The Riddler had constructed an interface for his Frankenstein's reject of a bomb that would likely blast a tower block into a charred crater if fiddled around with by, say, attempts to defuse it. Riddler always rooted out the weakest links in his own traps, but to defuse the bomb, to give up on this challenge was not one of tonight's options. It took more skill to take these things apart than put them together, in his opinion, and he had outsmarted himself in that respect.
Treacherous teasers went into overdrive. A soon-to-be ex-arsonist rocked on his heels in the cavern of a dim, dusty underground storage room; surrounded by miscellaneous junk and peppered with question mark upon question mark. He began to drown in a high tide of perfectly recalled television and radio show trivia. Paralysed by compulsive obsessions, he had implemented his own demise.
"If the earth were the size of an apple, it would feel as smooth as a billiard ball. One horsepower is equal to a) 200 watts b) 746 watts c) 1305 watts? Catgut is made from sheep, pig, or horse intestines, not from cats. Identical twins do not have identical finger prints. Do tigers have striped skin as well as striped fur? Eagles mate in mid air. Lined up in a row, it takes about two hundred million atoms to reach one inch. Is the third wedding anniversary called the Leather anniversary, yes or no? How long did the hundred years war actually last? The hundred years war lasted 116 years: from 1337 to 1453. The opposite sides of a die always add up to seven. The whip was the first man-made invention to break the sound barrier. Light travels at 187,000 miles per second, while sound travels at 1,100 feet per second. When this explosion goes off, I will see it before I hear it, and I will be dead before the sense-data can be processed by my brain. Won't I?"
The Riddler started to shake with unconscious terror, his conscious mind too raging with '?' '?' '?' '?' to comprehend the consequences of his foolproof equation.
One column of colour was extinguished. The double digits crept towards zero, quicker and quicker and quicker and ten, nine,
Eight.
Seven.
A shadow moved.
Five.
Four.
Three.
T W O.
ONE.
"…Zero?"
Velvet silence expanded slowly, to fill the vast subterranean room.
A minute later the Riddler struck a match with a tremulous, ink-stained hand.
Inches from his face hung a cold, forbidding mask; suspended in absolute black, the warm flame adding no colour to a grim white jaw.
"Time's up," growled the Batman.
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