Riddle Me This

Robin pursed his lips. Batman was once again talking to Kaldur. Alone. He tried not to be jealous, but the fact that his mentor, no his father, didn't want him irked him. A lot. Tapping his foot impatiently, Robin decided that he would work on weaponizing the Batglare. Any minute now, a hole would appear in the wall of the cave exposing his no-good cheating mentor.

As usual, it was Wally who tried to break the tension. "So...you guys want to hear a riddle?"

There were half-hearted affirmatives from the rest of the team. Robin just continued to stare at the wall. "What has a foot but no legs?"

M'gann smiled brightly. "On Mars, there are these cute little blob animals with feet. They hop around the whole time. We keep them as pets!"

Artemis smiled gently. "M'gann, I doubt the person who came up with the riddle has been to Mars. Or that they know a martian. The answers probably something else."

Wally jumped in his seat slightly. "It's something on Earth. Should I tell you the answer?"

Robin's eye twitched at Wally's excitement. Couldn't he tell that he was concentrating on turning his normal human genes into meta genes so that he could smite Bruce! Grinding his teeth, he growled. "A snail."

Wally blinked. He had not expected Robin to answer let alone answer correctly. "Good job, Rob. Okay. Try this one on for size. Poor people have it. Rich people need it. If you eat it, you die. What is it?"

Robin heaved a sigh. Apparently this was becoming a thing. "Nothing."

Conner scowled. "What's nothing?"

"The answer. Nothing is the answer." Robin sent Wally a glare. Wally had said that one on purpose to reference him being rich without saying it out right.

Wally narrowed his eyes and demanded, "What has one eye but cannot see?"

"A needle." Robin rolled his eyes. This was definitely becoming a thing which was beyond annoying. He found himself somewhat enjoying himself when all he wanted to do was glare at the wall before giving Bruce the silent treatment. Well maybe not the silent treatment. Bruce would probably enjoy that.

"How do you make the number one disappear?"

"You add the letter 'G' and its 'Gone.'"

"What goes up but never goes down?"

"Your age."

"Mary's father has 5 daughters – Nana, Nene, Nini, Nono. What is the fifth daughters name?"

"Mary."

"What gets broken without ever being held?"

"A promise."

"What is the next letter in the sequence: JFMAMJJASON_?"

"The letter D."

Artemis held up her hands. "Wait. The other's made sense, but how the hell did you figure that one out?"

Robin's lips quirked into a small smirk. "The sequence contains the first letter of each month. So the last letter would be 'D' for December. What can I say, I know a lot of riddles, and these are easy."

Wally frowned. "Okay Hotshot. Why don't you tell us a riddle?"

Robin raised an eyebrow. "You throw away the outside and cook the inside. Then you eat the outside and throw away the inside. What did you eat?"

The team didn't even get a chance to think about it before Robin asked, "A woman is sitting in her hotel room when there is a knock at the door. She opened the door to see a man whom she had never seen before. He said, 'Oh I'm sorry, I have made a mistake, I thought this was my room.' He then went down the corridor and in the elevator. The woman went back into her room and phoned security. What made the woman so suspicious of the man?"

Smirking Robin said, "What gets whiter the dirtier it gets?"

Robin was enjoying the stumped looks on his teammates' faces. Deciding to give them one more riddle for good measure, he said, "Pronounced as one letter, And written with three, Two letters there are, And two only in me. I'm double, I'm single, I'm black, blue, and gray, I'm read from both ends, And the same either way. What am I?"

"Corn, he knocked, chalkboard, and an eye." The words were said in a low growl from the corner of the room. Everybody but Robin jumped and whipped the heads over to look at where Batman was lurking.

Robin on the other hand groaned. Loudly. "Do you have to ruin everything?"

Only Robin could tell that Batman quirked an eyebrow at his response. "You were trying to weaponize the Batglare until a moment ago, yet you accuse me of ruining things?"

Robin tried to prevent the blush from rising to his cheeks. Growling softly he whisper-shouted, "You know I have jealousy issues! It's an only child thing!"

"Really? How do you figure that one?"

Robin smirked. Batman had just made his own bed. "I heard you tell Agent A that when Superman wanted to take me to the zoo. Remember, it was some sort of family day at his work, and he didn't have a kid to take?" Seeing the look on Conner's face, Robin backtracked. "Don't worry Supes, this was years ago, I must have been nine or something."

Deciding it best to break the tense silence, Wally asked, "So. Why are you guys so good at riddles anyways?"

Robin felt like facepalming. And judging by the twitching in Batman's gloved hand, he felt the same intense desire. Taking a deep breath, he began to explain slowly, "Dude. We fight a dude that calls himself Riddler. It's kind of a requirement to know a lot of riddles."

Batman swept out of the room and Robin followed him backwards, making the mind blown gesture and appropriate sound effects.

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Robin stared quietly at the Batcomputer. He was doing his best to ignore Bruce, despite the man's awkward attempts at starting a conversation. There was no way that he was making this easy for him. After all, jealousy is a green eyed monster. And there is just no reasoning with monsters.

Finally, Bruce spun his chair around, so Robin had no choice but to face his mentor. Clamping his lips shut, he stared up at his father-figure defiantly. If Bruce wanted answers, he would have to pry them from his cold, dead, lips.

Bruce obviously knew that, so he started the conversation. "Just because I wanted to talk to Aqualad alone, does not mean I think any less of you as a partner."

Robin pursed his lips and spun his chair so he was focused on the computer again. If Bruce thought that that was going to magically going to cure his jealousy, then he was much less of genius than Robin had previously given him credit for.

Robin growled as his chair was forcefully turned around again. "Do you want to know what we talked about?"

Robin sniffed and turned up his nose. He knew he was acting like a child, but he was sick and tired of working hard to gain Bruce's undivided attention, when Aqualad just had to walk into the room.

Bruce took a steadying breath. It was times like these when he wondered what had possessed him to take in a chile. "He gives me mission reports Dick."

"So do I. There's no need to talk to him privately for that." Robin sniffed and turned his chair around again. There was something about the evidence for the new case they were working.

He sighed as he was once again, forcefully turned around. "You never tell me how bad an injury is. Aqualad does. I'm not there Dick. I can't watch out for you. I can't keep you safe."

Robin blinked. "You can't keep me tucked under your cape forever Bruce. We look out for each other, and if there's ever an injury that I can't walk off or fix myself, I promise you'll be the first to know."

Bruce nodded. "Thanks Chum." With that settled, he glanced at the computer screen with interest. "There's something about this case. I swear, I've seen it before."

"Me too." Robin admitted. Snapping his fingers he looked up at Bruce with large eyes. "It's a riddle! A man was found dead on a Sunday morning. His wife calls the police immediately. The police question the wife and staff. The wife said she was asleep, the cook said he was cooking breakfast, the gardener said she was picking vegetables, the butler said he was cleaning the closet, and the maid said she was getting the post. The police immediately arrested the murderer. Who was the murderer?"

Bruce stilled. "The answer is the maid. But that doesn't make sense. If Riddler was behind it, how did he create this situation?"

Robin deflated. "There's no way he could. Maybe all our talk about riddles made me look for something that wasn't there."

"Unless, Riddler teamed up with someone who could control people's minds." Bruce pondered outloud.

The Dynamic Duo looked at each other and shouted "Mad Hatter" simultaneously.

As Bruce rushed off to get dressed, Robin checked the Batmobile to make sure that all their extra supplies were loaded in the back. Then he checked the programming on his bike to make sure that if there was an emergency, the bike would drive itself back to the Batcave. Stopping at the weapon's supply cabinet, Robin loaded up on batarangs, a few exploding disks, another rebreather, a few smoke pellets, some marbles, a fine cord that could carry approximately a thousand pounds, and most importantly, the emergency snack rations.

Batman came running out of the changing room as soon as he finished loading up and together they ran to their respective vehicles. Jumping onto his bike, Robin breathed into his comm, "Let's catch some crazy enigmas."

He could barely hear Batman's snort over the loud sounds of the screeching tires and the roaring engines.

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A/N: The maid did it because there is no mail delivered on a Sunday.

For those of you who are interested, this story is officially 75 pages long!

For those of you who asked to see riddles...here you go. Let me know what you think, and what you want to see next in the review section below!