Part 2
He sat and stared at the mugshots on the BatComputer in thought. One, an auburn-haired smirking genius - the other a scowling blonde follower. Riddler and Dead Switch had escaped Arkham Asylum hours after he'd talked with Scott. That couldn't be coincidence. Scott had a broken arm, Nigma had stitches to his face and extensive bruising. Whatever they knew that he didn't - it had been enough to force them to move immediately rather than wait for their injuries to heal.
'No sign, master Bruce?' Alfred asked as he pushed a tray of tea to his elbow.
'No,' He brooded. 'They know something Alfred, but Dead Switch wouldn't tell me.'
The butler picked up the silver teapot and began to pour a generous amount of tea into a cup. 'If I may, sir, the people you deal with are generally untrustworthy. Perhaps Ms Scott and Mr Nigma had indeed made contingency plans.' He suggested.
He remembered the look in Scott's eye. As though the riddle had made some kind of sense to her. The way she'd become defensive and obstructive when he'd probed. What time is spelled the same forwards and backwards? Bruce brooded on the answer: Noon. Which noon? It was a safe bet that it was in this timezone. Noon today? It had been and gone without apparent interest. 'It's more than that Alfred - it's -' He paused as an alert caught his attention. Riddler's social media account was active. A new update had been posted. A video.
Warily, he pressed play and was greeted by Edward Nigma himself. In the harsh light they were using, he could see the bruising along The Riddler's jaw from their fight hours ago. He wasn't using his voice modulator this time, which was a small mercy. That thing gave Bruce a headache. 'Welcome back, enthusiasts. It's time for another update. The King of Conundrums has an interesting case for you all today - when is a cat not a cat?' He smirked smugly into the camera, despite the stitches in his lip. 'When it's a copycat of course.'
Bruce did not like where this was going - he could tell. 'Computer, start tracing the IP address.' It was a long shot, but the two of them would have hardly had any time to properly hide themselves digitally. Riddler had done this sort of thing before - recorded and released his sick and twisted games, usually with traps but this didn't look like a riddle room. The video went on as the computer searched in the background.
'I'm afraid today there won't be any interesting riddle rooms. No, I have something a little more low-brow. Unfortunate, but you could say that this is well deserved. I hope you're watching, Batman.'
Oh he was. Where was this? It looked like a standard room. Wallpapered walls, university flags? He filed that away for later. 45% trace - 50%. Keep talking Riddler.
'Today's guest of honour is Alistair Hill. You might have heard that his father recently got re-elected as a serving judge at Gotham's courthouse, isn't that right, Mr Hill?'
The courthouse. Another piece of the puzzle, but so far, he didn't understand what connected Riddler, Hill, or the courthouse. He needed more information - but Riddler didn't look like he was going to give him time to gather evidence. The look on Dead Switch's face, the breakout, the swiftness of their actions - Riddler was moving fast. Faster than he'd ever been known to.
'I didn't do anything!' The young man dragged into the camera's view blurted.
'Oh but there's a lie. You've been busy, Mr Hill, haven't you?'
Batman's eye flicked to the IP tracer. 75% complete. Almost there. Almost. He just had to hope that whatever Riddler was getting at - and it was sure to be unpleasant - he would keep grandstanding and give him time to get there.
'Please - please Mr Riddler, we didn't - we -' the man - boy, barely an adult - pleaded.
We?
'Oh hush!' Riddler snapped at him. 'You're ruining it.' He turned back to the camera and beamed. 'If you are watching Batman - here's a riddle for you. What do most people need, but do not have?'
Time. The answer was time.
95% complete. Come on, Nigma. Talk yourself into a corner.
'I'm afraid you're all out.' The Riddler mocked and the video stopped, but the IP search had been fruitful. 14 Minerva Court. That was judge Hill's address - of course. Riddler was using the boy's own computer to record. It was elegant. Bruce was out of the chair and running for the car the second he saw the results as Alfred watched him go.
With a tut the butler picked up the fine china cup and took a delicate sip. 'This is an unfortunate turn of events.'
14 Minerva Court was inside a gated community. A large estate house just inside the wall. The house itself was dark when Batman let himself in through a window and activated his torch. Judge Hill and Mrs Hill were on vacation in the Caymans for the rest of the week, celebrating their re-election victory. They'd told plenty of people - including Bruce Wayne - their plans at the celebration party. Their son, Alistair, 19, was home alone on break from school. He'd had a run in with Riddler. Why? How had he gained Riddler's attentions and how had Riddler settled on him?
Batman's first objective was to scour the house for signs of life - hoping he wasn't too late and knowing he was. Riddler was nothing if not methodical. He would not post a video that was traceable without having finished what he'd come to do.
His pessimism was rewarded by a limp arm on the stairs as he scoured. The arm was connected to the body of Alistair Hill. It looked as though he'd been trying to escape, was chased and killed. There were traces of a pink chalky substance under the outstretched fingernails. From a plaster cast, perhaps? The one on Dead Switch's arm, he'd wager.
They'd been here.
He checked for a pulse. None. Still warm, couldn't have been dead more than an hour or two.
There was a door open further down the hall. The main light was off, but there was a desk light casting long shadows out into the hall. That could have provided the harsh light from the video. He moved for the door.
The room seemed to be Alistair's. A bed with flags above it, a visual match to the room in the video, a desk filled with homework - but the wall above the desk was covered in papers. Newspaper clippings, maps, mugshots. All of the same two people. Riddler and Dead Switch.
He didn't have time to study it in detail as another thing immediately grabbed his attention. In front of the collage was a bomb counting down.
00:04.
He cursed and rushed out of the room. There was no time for finesse, from the glance he'd gotten at it, there was enough C4 packed into it to obliterate the upper floor of the house. Dead Switch was horribly precise about the nature of her bombs.
00:03
He had no time to study the body further than he already had done, either. Should have known that this would have been an inevitable step in the plan.
00:02
The Riddler was known for his extreme reactions to situations - who, in Gotham's rogues fraternity, wasn't? - but this was different. There wasn't a tangible link between Riddler and Hill except for what was about to go up in smoke. Batman turned with a burst of speed and ran the length of the corridor - towards the window.
00:01
He smashed through the glass and burst out into the night as the bomb detonated behind him, destroying the crime scene, the body, and any clue as to where Nigma was going next. He managed to grapple up the wall, turned, and watched it as it all went up in the flames.
He sat atop the wall as fire trucks raced up the drive, hotly followed by police cruisers. Batman brooded as they began to tackle the fire that had obliterated most of the second floor of the house. Burning bits of paper were falling around him as the fire roared. He snatched a piece out of the air and stared at Edward Nigma's familiar mugshot as it smouldered. That bomb wasn't just there to destroy evidence. If it was, it would have detonated before Batman even got there. No - Nigma was taunting him with answers within his reach before they were snatched away.
Why?
A/N: Boom de casa! The plot thickens! Okay so last month I went through a "You know what I haven't seen in forever?" phase. I ended up rewatching the entirety of Batman The Animated Series and it still lives up to my childhood memories. This was pretty much inspired by that so if you get a BTAS vibe from Aper, now you know why.
Poor Bruce. No tea for him, no bad guy to beat up and he nearly gets blown sky high. Such is life as Batman.
