Thanks for the comments! I don't intend the Riddler to be as nutso as the 60's version, or demented in quite the same way as the Batman Forever version (which I am actually working my way through for the first time as we speak!). I do want him to be cunning, though. A worthy adversary and all that. As for the many-layered chess game... don't give away all my ideas. ;) I am planning to work it in later if possible.

Please pardon my corny references to The Prestige. I couldn't resist. xD

"How about a game of chess," Dick suggested casually to Bruce, who was reading the morning paper.

"I have to go to town today," Bruce replied, not looking up.

"Oh. Well, maybe we could go by the flea market. I've heard it's one of the largest in the country."

"I have to go to town for business," Bruce clarified. "Anyway, the flea market will be going on all week. We can go another time."

Dick sighed. "Everything good gets sold the first day or two of a good sale, Bruce."

"Hmm."

It was obvious that Bruce was not interested. Dick excused himself and went out to explore the house—again. He was sure he hadn't seen all of it the first time; there were so many corridors to get turned around in.

Batman didn't like going out during the day, but the flea market officially closed each night at eight, and the newspaper had said that the royal family had planned their excursion for the afternoon. He crouched atop one of Gotham's tall business buildings and watched the crowd below through high-powered goggles.

Many side-show acts surrounded the sales, and Bruce observed that children were especially attracted to them, while the adults were more interested in their bargain-hunting.

Just after two o'clock, the royal family of Lorandia arrived in a limousine. Photographers swarmed at them. The king and queen appeared willing to give the reporters a few comments. Bruce focused on the auburn-haired girl with them. She seemed to be accompanied by a companion or governess who was directing her charge away from the noise of the press.

Princess Ellora appeared to be interested in a cheap magic act being conducted by an agile man in a green suit. The magician leaped around the stage, pulling random items from a hat, a bag, the pockets of audience members. Bruce looked at the princess again to be sure she was all right before turning his attention back to the strange green figure which never seemed to stop moving.

The magician was now vanishing the items he had conjured up. When they were all away, he made his hat and bag disappear, too. He then began gesturing toward a large, multi-colored box at the back of his tiny stage. Bruce thought he knew what was coming. The magician would make himself disappear now, and reappear in some unexpected place such as the back of the audience.

Then the magician gestured to the audience and children began raising their hands, jumping up and down to be chosen. Bruce quickly returned his attention to the princess. Her companion seemed to be trying to hold her arm down. Another look at the magician revealed the green-garbed stranger gesturing grandly. The children began to clap. A moment later, the princess was walking toward the stage.

Batman turned and hurried back to the side of the building overlooking a blind alley. Why did I come out like this? Bruce Wayne would be far less conspicuous here. I'll never get near him. Not until it's too late. He rappelled down the wall to his waiting tank of a car and began the fastest emergency quick-change of his life.

Moments later, Bruce Wayne was walking briskly toward the magic act. The magician in green was standing next to the open trick box, which was quite empty.

"I shall have to go find her!" the magician declared. From the ground, Bruce could see that he wore a lavender mask which hid the upper half of his face, and a matching question mark adorned the front of his tunic.

A young woman in a brief, feathery costume shut the magician into the box as he called out, "If I do not return, it was nice to meet you all! Speaking of meet—" he added from the closed box, "take the vowels out of the word and it has something in common with this box!"

The children watching began whispering amongst themselves, trying to understand the riddle.

The pretty assistant pretended to be puzzled, too. "Meet?" she said. "Hmm. Take out the vowels and you have…" she opened the box.

Bruce didn't have to hear the punch line. He knew the box was empty. The question was, where did the princess and the riddler go? He quietly approached the anxious-looking governess. Knowing that the official language of Lorandia was French, he greeted her: "Bonjour, mademoiselle. Comment allez-vous?"

Surprised to hear her native tongue, the girl gave him her full attention. "Oh—bonjour, monsieur. Er… ca va. I do speak English, you know."

"Very well, too," Bruce said, knowing that manners were important to the Lorandians, no matter how desperate the situation.

"Thank you. I am Georgette, governess to Princess Ellora."

"I am Bruce Wayne." Bruce extended his hand.

"Wayne? Are you by chance the son of that millionaire Wayne who saved our country from financial ruin some twenty years ago?"

"The same. Are you all right? You seem very worried."

"To tell the truth, I am. Ellora—she loves magic tricks of any kind. She wants to be on the stage. She volunteered for this disappearing trick, and now she is out of my sight. If her parents return and she is not with me, I am certain to be dismissed from their service."

"Well, let's go and find her," Bruce said, offering Georgette his arm.

"But she must be here somewhere—under the stage, perhaps? This riddling magician has promised to return her momentarily. If he does not, he will be arrested, no?"

"But he has disappeared as well," Bruce pointed out. "My guess is he plans to wait and bring her out at the end of his act. But we can't wait that long. We need to find the box—the place vanished things go until it is time for them to reappear."

"Of course! The Prestige."

"I've been meaning to see that movie," Bruce muttered as he led Georgette around toward the back of the small stage. "People keep telling me I look like one of the actors. But he's British, so I'm sure we're not related."

They circled the flimsy, well decorated partition and followed a section of temporary fencing until they reached a small gate.

"Hold it, pal," A clown told him. "Nobody comes back here."

"You're wrong," Bruce contradicted. "There's already someone backstage who isn't part of the act. We've come to collect her."

A fire eater paused his practice to look over at them. "Nobody's come through here. This is our special area to practice, bub. So beat it or we'll have to get the authorities over here."

"I wish you would; then we could figure out who kidnapped our little girl."

Georgette made no attempt to clarify Bruce's words. She apparently didn't care what the performers thought their relationship was.

A mime stepped up to Bruce and wagged a finger in his face.

"How dare you accuse us," the clown interpreted.

"I'm not accusing anyone yet. Now, where's the magician in the green suit?"

"The Riddler? He's on deck, doing his gig."

"No, he just disappeared, along with a ten-year-old girl."

"Douze," Georgette said quietly.

"Twelve-year-old girl," Bruce corrected himself.

"We don't know anything about that," the fire eater said. "Our acts are all independent of each other. It's every man for himself at this flea market."

"You're right. And if you don't let us through, I'm going to come in there and show you what that cliché really means."

"Flea market?" the clown asked stupidly.

"No—every man for himself."

"Right. I knew that."

"Aw, let 'em by," the fire eater said. "What do we care? Just don't tell anyone we let you back here, or everyone will want a tour."

Performers went this way and that as Bruce and Georgette searched the backstage area, but they saw no odd magicians, and no little girl with chestnut hair. They saw a troupe of four dressed as Goldilocks and the three bears, but the girl's hair color was quite natural. They saw an archer dressed as Robin Hood, but his green suit had no lavender question mark. They saw many masked and painted people, but no one fit the bill.

When they returned to the small stage where the Riddler had performed his act, a fresh crew of children was enjoying the magic show—with a new magician, robed in red. The trick box was gone.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to notify the authorities, Georgette," Bruce told her ruefully. He silently berated himself for allowing the princess to be kidnapped and the kidnapper to escape under his very nose.

"Oh, no," Georgette wailed. "Je suis perdu. Ellora…"

"Ne t'inquiète pas," Bruce said quickly, following Georgette's lapse into French. "Il va se ranger."

"How can you say that? She is gone. I shall be dismissed. I will never see the princess again!"

"You must go to the police and tell them everything you can about the Riddler's act and what you saw. I'll find the king and queen and tell them what happened. If they hear it from me they may not be as angry with you. But every moment counts, understand? Pour la fille, chaque minute est de grande importance."

Georgette nodded grimly, her wide eyes brimming with tears. "C'est la verité. Merci—thank you, Mr. Wayne. You are very kind."

"That horrid girl—she must be dismissed at once," the queen lamented.

"Your Majesty, Georgette may be the best help the police have to find your daughter," Bruce told her. "She was with Ellora the moment she disappeared and she can describe the man responsible. The Gotham police force may have been corrupt in the past, but under our new commissioner, it's become very efficient. Because of who your daughter is, I think you'll receive a ransom note soon. If there is any way I can be of assistance, you have only to call." He handed his card to the king's aid.

"Mr. Wayne," the king said solemnly, "you are here in our hour of need just as your father once was. I don't know what you can do for us now, but we greatly appreciate your support. Now we must confer with the police. They have more questions for us. We will be sure to contact you if we have news."

Bruce nodded. "Goodbye for the present, Your Highness." He bowed and walked away. He was soon lost in the bustle of people on the outskirts of the flea market. He knew that the police would soon want to question him as well, to see if he could tell any more about the side show rehearsal area. But he was sure he could tell them no more than Georgette could, and Commissioner Gordon would soon be trying to contact Batman. Time to change again.

"So, how do you contact Batman during the day?" Henry Mason, a new Gotham City PD recruit, asked commissioner Gordon.

Gordon was looking out his office window at the late afternoon sky. Sunset was still hours away. "I'm afraid we don't have any good way to do that until nightfall," he answered. "Of course, sometimes he comes to us first. But I don't think he will have heard about the kidnapping yet."

"Yeah. You want me to get you anything?"

"Can you make our boys conduct their questioning faster?" Gordon sighed. "Never mind. A cup of water, I guess."

"OK." Mason turned toward the door—and nearly jumped out of his skin. "C-Commissioner…"

Gordon turned around. Batman was standing in the doorway.

"You're here," Gordon said faintly. "I didn't think you would have heard…"

Batman's piercing eyes seemed to look through the young recruit.

"This is Henry Mason," Gordon said. "I handpicked him myself. He just finished training in New York a month ago. You can trust him."

"Right now we can't trust anyone," Batman contradicted in his deep, rough voice. "But he'd be stupid to act on anything we say if he's involved in this."

"Do you think the threats we received have to do with the princess's disappearance?" Gordon asked.

"They do. A horse isn't a horse when it's a chestnut—the color of the princess's hair. A dog is like a Japanese number when he has fleas because he is ichi, the Japanese number one. The princess was kidnapped from a flea market. And we might have foreseen it if we'd understood the third riddle—the answer is royal blue."

Gordon closed his eyes and leaned his head on one hand. "It's so obvious in hindsight. But that doesn't do us any good. How do we find the princess?"

"This green magician is eccentric. He likes riddles more than the average charlatan. He won't be able to resist sending more riddles in his ransom note. He wants to taunt you again. This time we'll have to outsmart him."

"What can we do in the meantime?"

"Try to find out where he came from. It might tell you where he's going."

"You mean his background could tell us where he's likely to hide the princess?" Mason put in."

"Right."

"Let's get on that, Mason," Gordon instructed. "Find out if our unit is done questioning the governess. We need a detailed description and a composite sketch. We also need a report from the officers who questioned the other performers in the area—see if they heard any names or aliases for this guy."

Mason took notes in his notepad like the good recruit that he was. When Gordon paused, he looked up. "Uh… where'd the Bat-man go?"

Gordon looked around. "Probably out the window when we weren't looking. He's like that."

"Oh."

I doubt you need help, but here are the French translations.

Bruce: Hello, miss. How are you?

Georgette: Hello, sir. Uh... OK.

(later) Georgette: Twelve.

(later) Georgette: I am lost...

Bruce: Don't be upset. It will work out. (shortly after:) For the girl, each minute is of great importance.

Georgette: It is the truth. Thank you.

If I spelled any of that wrong, I apologize profusely. And just in case someone is still scratching his head, the answer to the riddle is M-T, or "empty." Cheesy, I admit. But I'm not exactly a master riddler...