Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters of the Batman franchise, except for my own additions.

A/N:

SUMMARY OF CHANGES:

Eddie no longer meets Tom face-to-face. Further exposition on his character and why he's doing what he is doing.

"The citizen is becoming a pawn in a game where nobody knows the rules, where everybody consequently doubts that there are rules at all, and where the vocabulary has been diminished to such an extent that nobody is even sure what the game is all about.:

Andrew Eldritch

Every maniac started sane. This is something that is rarely considered when viewing the end product. For Edward Nashton, he was more than sane, he was super-sane. The man had delved so deep into his own sanity- patterns, information, the mathematics of the world, that he had come out the other side. He wasn't insane, no, he was in-sane; he'd built a castle there made of nothing but connections and deductions. Anyone peeking into that world of corkscrewing thoughts and logical leaps would have been driven crazy by the gymnastics his frontal lobe underwent as his thoughts slowly gyrated him through the rational world and out the other end.

Being smart means you recognize the underlying patterns of the world; the significance of all things.

But it takes a genius to recognize that nothing holds significance; no moral, no ethics, just the Truth.

Enter Edward Nashton; the monomaniac.

Consider for a moment the actual condition of monomania; it was described in the early nineteenth century as "involuntary, irresistible, and instinctive activity" that "chained the patient to actions that neither reason nor emotion have originated, that conscience rejects, and will cannot suppress." Monomaniacs were described later as otherwise sane individuals, locked into thoughts that are not theirs by choice. Given that definition, that meant that a monomaniac when not being influenced by their compulsion (in this case riddles) was entirely sane (and in this case, furious).

So his office was clean, spartan, and functional. It was everything he needed to think, yet already there were signs of what was to come. Question marks doodled at the corner of his handwritten notes, odd little 'poems' found stuffed into his jacket pockets, but everyone has to fall of the sanity wagon sometimes, and Edward's wagon was traveling at Mach 5. The world did not know it, but it would be a spectacular crash. But that comes later. For now, he is just Mr. Nashton, head of the GCPD Cyber Crimes Division.

Supplementary to his job were his activities as Gotham's "Broker"; he did not yet view these two as mutually exclusive. The thuglike cops who patrolled the streets were 'protectors of the peace', but in Cyber Crimes, they protected the Truth. Edward didn't see any harm in violating the law in pursuit of that, especially when his colleagues did so in pursuit of stuffing their own pockets. Already he was finding corruption and lies where the world would have remained blind if he had stuck to the law. Because of him, Gotham would know the Truth.

It was midnight, and currently, he was The Broker (It was a silly name, he'd have to find a better one, later.), on one of his hacked CCTV feeds, he was watching a clip of two brothers, clearly meant to guard a door, seen walking away from said door ten minutes before it was kicked down and invaded by some heavily armed individuals.

It was very peculiar. He had already been puzzling over it for an hour. Halfway through, he'd gotten an itch. It meant he wanted to know- HAD to know- what they knew. How did they figure out they were about to be overwhelmed? Where was their information coming from? Someone had tapped a valuable seam of data, and he itched to take it from them.

He hated not being in on a secret.

He already had a suspicion as to who it was, which excited him. Pulse/Spill, a broker of considerable knowledge and what appeared to be a large network, had been a dog at his heels for quite some time. What's more is that while the knowledge they brokered seemed to indicate an extensive network of spies and informants, there was never any sign of such a network. It should have been impossible; a conspiracy is only as strong as its' weakest link, and with a network so big, there should have been plenty. It was even in their online tag; Pulse/Spill was a play on words of the Norwegian word 'puslespill'.

Puzzle.

Whoever this Pulse/Spill was, they were a thorn in his side, an itch to be scratched.

He knew that it shouldn't bother him, seeing as he only had become 'The Broker' for the purpose of uncovering the truth, but something about having a rival irked him. It felt like a threat, to his knowledge, to his power. He kept telling himself that his power didn't matter, but as he delved more and more into the world of information back channels, he had come to realize that power made all the difference. He used to have to blackmail thugs to get the information they held, or execute them in various ways, usually involving a technological 'accident'. Now the very fear of his name caused them to open up and spill like a skull cracked by 200 Newtons of malfunctioning construction equipment. (that had been a personal favorite). His job had become very easy in recent months.

Yes, power was important, and Pulse/Spill was a threat. (not to his ego, rational men don't HAVE egos)

That was why he was currently tapped into one Tom Hobbes' cellphone lines- it was a burner phone, not meant to be used for more than two weeks to avoid being tracked, but that had only provided Edward a ten minute hurdle of digging through camera feeds and purchases before he found where the fool had bought his number. He turned on the phone's speaker, causing an influx of loud white noise, mainly to get the troglodyte's attention. He heard the man cursing and the rustling of clothes as he fished his phone out and tried to turn it off.

"Mr. Hobbes …" He began- the came a long and chilling silence. "You were not at your post tonight."

"You have, until this point, have in various ways impressed upon me your entirely unremarkable intelligence. In fact, I would have to say that looking at your recorded behavior until today, I would have suspected you to have the intelligence of, oh…. let's say…" He leaned back and began to tap his chin, playacting at considering his next words carefully, though his prey could not see him. "A well-trained chimpanzee." Venomous sarcasm dripped into puddles from every word. The thug on the other line had the good sense to at least remain silent. Again, he let the silence hang before continuing on, switching from a deep and dangerous baritone, to a lighter, more jovial voice.

"And yet here I find myself surprised! You seem to have a shred of smarts after all. Perhaps you didn't get the short end of both the ugly and the stupid stick!" At this he heard a derisive snort from the other end. He frowned, not liking the reaction he was getting. No matter, the knuckle-dragger would fear him yet. "But who am I kidding." Nashton chortled "We both know you didn't come by your smarts naturally."

"Who the fuck is this?" Came the snarl from the other end. Edward calmly smiled; he must have hit a nerve- so the informant was someone he knew.

"I believe your 'kind' call me 'The Broker'. While it isn't the most inventive of names, for now, it is also what you may call me."

Another long silence. So whoever this 'Hobbes' was had heard of him. That was good, it would make this go smoother. He had already electrocuted enough thugs to get his point across in the criminal underworld; he didn't just deal in information, he dealt in death, too.

He decided to cut straight to the chase. He had more important work to do- people to blackmail, identity thefts to solve, and he needed to know how Tom Hobbes came by his precious knowledge fast; so he could get on with strategizing. Preferably without spending any more time threatening him, a tasteless method, but one that Edward Nashton never shied from. He uncrossed his fingers and laid them lightly on his desk.

"I can forgive a man for dealing in information, Mr. Hobbes, but not for forgetting to share it with me. Now, this can go one of two ways-"

"I will give you my informant if you let me and my brother live. She has information coming in on all the bosses."

There was a long silence as Nashton processed this goon's words. The arrogant little peon was trying to make a deal! And he had interrupted him.

(Pulse/Spill was a she?)

"I find that highly unlikely, Mr. Hobbes." He wasn't sure what he doubted the most; that the peon know Pulse/Spill directly, or that they were female. While he looked down on both genders equally, he'd always been under the impression that women were weak-willed, and emotional.

"It's true!" Edward could hear the desperation in the man's voice.. He'd latched on to something that might save his skin, and was willing to say anything. Perhaps even the truth, Edward mused to himself while casually checking his nails for dirt. Silence was often the best motivator for people to share more information. "She has informants everywhere, like you! And nobody knows she exists! I'll give her to you, and you can take her network!"

"What makes you think I want her network? I doubt your informant is a player of any great talent or measure. If she had a network of any consequence, I would know about it" Now it was time to go in for the kill; was this man's source truly Pulse/Spill? Or simply a small fry, soon to be eaten by the sharks? Eager to tell him what he wanted to hear, the dunce laid all his cards on the table.

"But she doesn't use it! She only sells it to little guys like me, guys who don't make a difference from knowing- she's smart, Mr. Broker, like you!" The pissant was getting ahead of himself. But still…. it was an intriguing concept. His confession made it all the more likely that his informant was Pulse/Spill, but it didn't explain why he- she- he corrected himself- had slipped up. Was it intentional? A feint? If what Tom Hobbes said was true, then a Player like that truly would have slipped under Edward's radar- simply by nature of appearing inconsequential. 'A snake in the grass- eating only mice until something big walks by'. He thought to himself. He had no doubt now that Pulse/Spill was truly a threat- the only people who flew that low carrying that much information were people like him. People with big plans. He itched all over. He HAD to know if what the moron was saying was true.

Consider a moment the monomaniac.

So the man named Tom Hobbes lived through another night he should have died on, and Edward Nashton began to plan a new move in the Game.