It was a cold winter's day in Gotham and Edward Nygma was lurking in the shadows. No one knew he was here: not Cobblepot, not Joker or even that binary freak Dent, and he had been very careful to make sure he hadn't been followed. This little wheeze would tax and hopefully destroy that annoying Dark Knight for sure and he didn't want anyone spoiling it.

He was in Gotham's Diamond District and had recently taken ownership of the Gotham Cinema. According to the official documents he was Mike Arresbrokken, a Danish property developer based in downtown Metropolis. He had bought it so he could set up a trap for the batman using lots of clever devices. Handily, all of them looked like they belonged in a theatre of some sort so the cinema coming on the market when it did made him think that some sort of super-criminal god was smiling down on him.

He had a few henchmen in the building setting things up, not that he was too happy about that. He didn't particularly like having henchmen as they were something of a liability: Most of the lower-grade criminals in this city were as stupid as a matchstick skyscraper, and just as reliable. They all had seemingly unbreakable allegiances to the other big fish and were very likely to go telling said bosses all they knew in exchange for money or power, and it was fairly obvious that money was the biggie for the majority of them, as his own little network of informants was testament. He especially didn't like the idea of having people such as the Joker knowing what he was up to as they were as unstable as a jelly on a very active fault line and would almost certainly want to poke their insane little beaks in and wreck things. So consequently his current batch of employees were labouring under the impression that they were working for Roberto Ficticci, a somewhat fictitious mafiosi type who was based in Bludhaven and who was trying to put the feelers out for Gotham and when their 'contracts' came to an end so would their pathetic little lives, not that they were aware of that little bit of fine-print of course.

He wondered if his recent letter to Penguin had the desired effect: to send the angry little weirdo into a rage and do something rash that would upset whatever mad little scheme he was working on. Never mind for now, he could find out later easily enough and making sure that his idiot workers were doing things right was taking up quite a lot of his attention.

As he lurked and watched his plan come together, he was unfortunately unaware that his efforts to ensure no-one had been tailing him had failed completely and that high above and watching him with great interest was the Batman.

"Oh Edward, you really think this will work? You're not going to be happy with the end result, you're really not." Bruce muttered quietly to himself.

He quietly made his way to the roof of the cinema and found a way in. Carefully he made his way down to the auditorium and after a couple of minutes found himself overlooking the vast space. The floor was a hive of activity, with electrified floors, spikes here there and everywhere, and other dangerous looking devices being installed. There were several of Riddler's signature question marks dotted about the walls as well as an electronic access panel or two. "Right," he told himself, "time to get to work."

20 minutes later and he emerged from the rooftop access and snuck a peek down to where Riddler was; he was still there and was using a walkie-talkie. A quick scan about with the RF decrypter and Bruce was listening in. Nygma was making the final arrangements for his 'trap'. Shame really, but never mind. Apparently he was planning to kidnap a city councillor and place them in a rigged chair so that when Batman burst in and figured out the puzzles in order to save the day, the councillor and the hero would both be killed in a blaze of fire and electricity. According to Riddler it would be 'a beautiful way to end a promising dunderheads career'.

The next day and the councillor was indeed kidnapped and strapped into the chair, and the Batman had been lured to the trap through a series of not-too-taxing puzzles. Nygma was sat in his private suite in the Gotham Royal Hotel, watching the drama unfold on a couple of laptops. His room overlooked the cinema so he could get a direct view of the catastrophic action. This was going to be epic.

There was the captive struggling and screaming for help (the fool) and here right on cue came the Dark Knight. From the door you could see the victim in his chair on the stage, but there was no way of getting there directly, he had a complex little path to run to get to the prize: a timed run through a set of swinging blades, baterang the big question mark to allow a path through the electrified floor, hack the quad-encrypted panel to open the door, find a way over the acid pool, get through the narrow corridor without touching the sides (otherwise some explosives would be triggered), get past the trick floor by treading only on the tiles that spelled 'Batman Is An Idiot', explode the wall to get to the motor that activates the lift, go up and baterang another question mark to shift the electrified gate, run around the balcony dodging the whirring blades, the falling masonry and hidden gun traps, before leaping onto the stage and simultaneously hitting both the buttons to deactivate the chair. Get any of it wrong and there would be the most spectacular explosion the the world had seen, and here stood the Batman at the start of this death-inviting run. For some reason though, he was grinning and that was really getting annoying, "What's making you smile!" Edward shouted into his headset, "I demand you tell your intellectual superior!"

"Tell you what", laughed the hero, "I'll show you." Batman pulled a small device from his belt and pressed a button. The straps on the captive's chair all released and the councillor stood up, straightened his suit and walked toward the door. As he went, a little path in the floor opened up to allow him through. Both Batman and the councillor waved at the camera and turned to leave. Before he left, the councillor pressed a hitherto unnoticed switch on the wall and cut power to the entire building. Just outside was a fleet of vans ready to take away all of Riddler's devices and traps for recycling.

Nygma was about to throw his headset down in a furious rage when there was a knock on the door, "What?" He shouted.

"Message for Mr Riddler." The door opened and the hotel employee handed Nygma a silver tray with a cloche and left. Edward removed the cover and there was a neatly folded piece of paper. With a great air of puzzlement, he picked it up, unfolded it and read it aloud to himself.

"Sad you may well be,

But this will just not do

So my friend in green

The opposite I wish for you

A service for the messiah

You get this time of year

This will surely lift you higher,

When seasons greetings you hear

If this escapes your grasp,

And you're feeing stressed

I wish you a Happy Christmas,

Because the Batman's always best.

Your nemesis.

Ps, Knock knock."

There was a knock on the door. "Go away!" Edward snapped.

Suddenly a large group of armed police burst in, stating they were arresting him on suspicion of kidnap, endangering the general public and being a 'damned nuisance'.

Stood on top of the cinema, looking into Riddler's window while the police greeted the room's occupant was Batman. watching the chaos in the hotel room.

"I don't believe he appreciated that." Albert stated.

"You may be right," replied the Bat, "but he definately deserves it. Okay, its time to go and annoy Harvey." And so off he went to terrorise another of Gotham's criminal elite.