Chapter Two
The Riddler mostly remained deep in thought while he waited for Yin to return. Real or imagined, being attacked by his father again was not something he could get over so easily. It had deeply shaken him and was dredging up memories of that horrible day in his childhood.
"You little brat! There's no way those scores are really yours. You know I bombed out of high school. You cheated, didn't you?! You cheated!"
"No! No, Dad, I'm telling the truth. Just because you couldn't make it in school doesn't mean I can't!"
"And if you didn't cheat, you're too smart for your own good. Why aren't you ever interested in anything else, huh? You know having to drop out of playing baseball after your mother died was the worst thing for me. You were supposed to take up my mantel and play!"
"Mom dying should have been the worst thing for you! What good is baseball? All you do is hit a ball around a diamond. That's so boring!"
The memory of the bat suddenly striking him to the floor made him flinch in the present. For a long moment he had just sprawled there, looking up at his father in hurt disbelief. Or at least it had seemed like a long moment. In actuality it couldn't have been more than several seconds, because the assault didn't let up. The man had completely lost his temper, hitting his son over and over and ignoring his frightened, pained screams. He hadn't stopped until the boy had lain still on the floor, no longer screaming.
The Riddler shuddered, turning away. The experience had been so horrible that he had blocked it out until earlier this year, when ending up in a second coma had brought back the buried memories of the first. He remembered being confused as a child as to why he was going to live with his uncle for a while after waking up in the hospital. But he had welcomed the change, as his uncle had always been kind and understanding, and he hadn't liked going back with his father later.
If his father really hadn't been here today, what on Earth would have prompted him to imagine the attack? Had he been drugged?
He paused. What had happened to him was similar to what he had witnessed two or three times in Arkham. But he wasn't in Arkham. How could it be the same thing?
Nothing was making much sense right now.
The sound of the door opening brought his attention up. Yin was stepping into the room. "Riddler?" Her hair was down, falling around her shoulders. She was still wearing red, but now it was some sort of Chinese robe.
He smiled and got up. "You found something, I see."
"It's Mulan. From the Disney movie," Yin replied. She raised an eyebrow at his get-up. "I had a feeling you might do that."
He smirked. "The business suit is more professional for my current career, but sometimes I miss wearing this."
"That doesn't surprise me." Yin came over to him, studying the green jumpsuit and the strange strips of sleeves that only covered one side each of his arms before ending in cut question mark patterns on the backs of his hands. "What does surprise me is how you manage to get that to hold in place."
"And that," he replied as he took up his cane and headed for the door, "will be one of my little secrets."
Yin went with him. "I wonder what the hostess will think when I show up with the Riddler."
"I'm curious to know if they'll realize I'm the genuine article and not just a poser in costume," he said.
"After the way we've been making the headlines lately, I'd say there's a pretty good chance that they'll at least suspect you're the real thing." Yin waited while he locked the office, then led him to her car. Soon they were inside and Yin was pulling away from the curb.
"So where is this party?" the Riddler asked. They reached the corner and Yin stopped as several costumed children and a chaperone hurried across the street.
"Not too far from where I live," Yin said. "It's another apartment complex. A little fancier than mine, though."
"Hmm. Interesting." The Riddler paused. "You say you already tried several other people before coming to me in desperation?"
Yin rolled her eyes. "Well, I wouldn't say I was desperate. But yes."
"I wouldn't think you'd have any trouble finding someone to accompany you."
"I probably wouldn't have, if Ethan was still on the force. Or available at all. Everyone else already had plans or wasn't interested." Yin smiled a bit. "Ethan would have been happy to be invited. And he probably would've had fun dressing up, too."
He nodded. "I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for you when he went insane from the Joker's torture and those chemicals."
Yin gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter. "You get awfully close to someone when you work with them every day. Then suddenly he was torn away so tragically, so needlessly, and even though Bruce Wayne and I tried so hard to bring him back to himself, we couldn't do it."
Behind the mask, the Riddler's eyes flickered at the mention of Bruce Wayne. He had learned Bruce's secret, although it wasn't something he would reveal to anyone, even Yin. But he wouldn't be surprised if she figured it out herself someday, if she really put her mind to it as he had.
"He was very troubled the first time I saw him in Arkham," he said instead. "The second time, he was doing much better."
Yin smiled. "He is. I'm still hoping and praying that this time I'm not getting my hopes up in vain, but I really think he's going to pull through."
"And then he'll be around to attend parties with you."
"Maybe. It could be a while before he'll feel that confident." But then Yin stiffened, realizing what might really be behind that remark. "It's not that you're a temporary replacement until then," she tried to assure him. "And it's not that I wanted the other people I asked tonight to go with me more than I wanted you to come. I'm probably closer to you than I am to most of them, as weird as that sounds. We mostly do shop talk or superficial things, unlike some of the talks you and I have had. I just honestly didn't even think you'd be interested in something like this."
"Ordinarily I probably wouldn't be," the Riddler answered. "But it's nice to feel wanted." He smirked. "And it'll be fun to really be the Riddler again, if only for a few hours."
"Just as long as you don't decide to challenge all the guests to an obstacle course of riddles," Yin said with a half-smirk in return.
"That's not a bad idea," the Riddler said. "It would certainly be more stimulating than bobbing for apples or playing Pin the Arm on Frankenstein's Monster."
Yin had to laugh in spite of herself. "I don't know what's planned," she said. "Dinner will be served. And kids will probably still be coming around, so someone will need to answer the door to them."
"In some parts of the country, the trick-or-treating stops as early as eight," the Riddler said. "But here in Gotham, an often dangerous city, it can go on way into the night."
"Crazy, isn't it?" Yin remarked. "I guess The Batman will be out tonight to try to make sure they stay safe."
"Most likely."
"Hopefully there won't be any actual crises for him to deal with," Yin mused. She didn't want to bring it up when she was trying to keep the Riddler's mind off of it, but she couldn't help worrying that with the possible attack on him, there could be some nutcase wandering around Gotham trying to do the same thing to others. She had told the police on duty to be alert for anyone carrying strange-smelling objects or drugs, but she wasn't sure how seriously they had taken her.
"There's usually something," the Riddler said.
"I know," Yin said as she turned a corner. "I guess that's probably at least some of why he became The Batman."
xxxx
Bruce was in fairly good spirits when he arrived home. "Hi, Alfred," he greeted as he came through the front door and found Alfred hovering near the candy bowl. "What are the costumes like this year?"
Alfred looked pleased. "So far, I've counted two Batmen and one each of Robin and Batgirl."
"Cool," Bruce said.
"And of course, the usual parade of miniature Gotham supervillains," Alfred sighed. "This year I even saw a Riddler."
"Just what he needs—a reason for his ego to get even bigger," Bruce said, shaking his head.
"Master Dick is off at some party with his school friends," Alfred continued. "It's supposed to be an overnight adventure. So it's just the two of us tonight, Sir."
"Until the Batwave goes off," Bruce said.
"Ah yes. But perhaps we'll get lucky and you'll be able to have a nice, quiet night at home for once."
Bruce shrugged. "It wouldn't seem right if I didn't get to wear my costume tonight," he said. "But like you said, hopefully nothing too weird will happen."
"And exactly what constitutes 'nothing too weird', Master Bruce?" Alfred wondered. "The absence of the Joker attempting to cause all of Gotham's citizens to laugh until they die? Oswald Cobblepot not trying to restore the Cobblepot fortune by helping himself to very expensive treats?"
"Actually, those things not happening would be pretty weird," Bruce mused. "But they're locked up safely in Arkham, so unless they randomly decide to break out tonight, the kids should be pretty safe from them. Although it does seem like Halloween would be the Joker's favorite holiday. Maybe he'll come around anyway."
"Heaven forbid," Alfred groaned.
"Detective Yin called and told me about something strange while I was driving home," Bruce said. "Something about Nygma passing out in front of his office and waking up raving about his father beating him, even though he didn't have a mark on him."
"Oh dear," Alfred frowned. "You don't suppose his sanity is failing him?"
"I don't think so. Neither did Detective Yin. She thought maybe he'd been drugged. I drove around the area, but I couldn't find any trace of any suspicious characters. And Yin and Nygma had already looked and couldn't find anyone then, either."
"Well, that isn't encouraging, but perhaps it's an isolated incident?" Alfred suggested, somewhat hopefully. "I'm afraid we both know Edward Nygma has quite a concourse of nemeses who would be delighted to do whatever they could to make his life miserable."
"I know, Alfred, but there's also the possibility this is the beginning of some new disaster in Gotham." Bruce settled on the couch.
"That is what I'm afraid of," Alfred frowned.
Without warning the Batwave let out its shrill cry. Both Bruce and Alfred jumped a mile.
"Unknown disturbance in a neighborhood several blocks from here," Bruce reported. "I'm on it."
"Very good, Sir," Alfred sighed, just as the doorbell rang. "Coming!" he called, preparing for the next batch of goblins.
xxxx
The last thing Batman was expecting to see as he arrived on the block in question was a group of terrified children clinging to their shaken teenage escort. "What happened here?" Batman frowned.
"I'm really not even sure," the teenager gulped. "Everything smelled funny and then . . ."
"It was awful!" wailed a boy of about eight, gesturing wildly with his skeleton-glove-covered hands. "It was the Horseman from Sleepy Hollow!"
Batman stared. "What?"
"He just galloped up on his black horse and laughed really creepy," the kid continued. "Then he threw a pumpkin!"
"There's no pumpkin," a girl dressed as a princess sniffed. "It was a big awful dragon with real fire breath!" She waved her hands in the same frenetic manner. "It tried to blow all of us away!"
"How did you survive?" Batman asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I don't know," she admitted. "I thought we were all burned terrible. But then we weren't!"
The youngest, who couldn't have been more than five, shuddered in his panda costume. "It wasn't like that," he said. "It was a big mean grizzly bear. Grrr!" He made claws out of his hands for emphasis.
Batman looked to the teenager. "What did you see?"
"Lord Voldemort," was the gulped reply. "Just like in the movies and everything."
"You can't have all seen something different," Batman said.
"We're not lying!" the girl wailed.
"We really saw stuff!" the skeleton boy insisted.
"It was mean," the panda boy declared.
"Well, where did all of these things go?" Batman frowned. "They couldn't have just disappeared into thin air."
"Voldemort held up his wand and was casting a spell on us," the teenager shuddered. "I shut my eyes real tight and tried to shield the kids. Then when nothing happened and they kept screaming in terror, I opened my eyes and saw he was gone."
"The grizzly tried to eat us and then disappeared," the panda boy said.
"And we told you about the dragon and the Horseman," the girl said.
"So you all got scared and shut your eyes and you don't know where these things went," Batman mused.
"But . . ." The teen looked bewildered. "You're right that we couldn't have all seen different things. Either they were all there or nothing was. So what was it?!"
"I don't know." Batman looked towards the hill that the kids were all facing. "Is that where everything was?"
"Yeah," the group said in unison.
"Then that's where any clues will be." Batman started for the hill. "You kids had better either get to a more populated street or go home."
"We're getting out of here, that's for sure," the teen said.
Batman heard them hurrying up the sidewalk as he continued his march towards the hill. "The grass is flattened down over here," he said to himself as he reached the top. "The marks are close to circular, almost like horses' hooves."
He frowned. Had someone been playing a prank and pretending to be the Horseman? But that wouldn't account for the other strange sights . . . or for the lack of a pumpkin.
The sight of something that didn't quite match with the deep green of the grass gave him pause. He bent down, extracting something long and yellow from amid the blades. "Straw?" He stared at it before quickly slipping it into a test tube for later examination.
"Master Bruce?" Alfred's voice crackled over the communicator. "Have you uncovered the source of the disturbance?"
"No," Batman replied. "Someone was here, riding a horse, but only one of the children saw something like that. Everyone else each saw something different."
"What?! But that's . . ."
"Impossible? I know." Batman surveyed the area from the top of the hill. "Right now, my only clues are indentions in the grass that seem to have been made by the horse's hooves . . . and a piece of straw."
"Straw, Sir? The horse's dinner, perhaps?"
"Perhaps. I'm going to follow the tracks."
". . . Well, do be careful," Alfred said in resignation.
Batman smiled a bit. "Aren't I always?"
"Not always as much as you should be," Alfred scolded.
"That's the risks of being a crime-fighter," Batman shrugged. Taking out a flashlight, he found the path of the horse and began to follow it.
Unfortunately, it ended at the end of the grass. Batman frowned, studying the asphalt. "Gone," he muttered.
Unless, of course, it had ran over the road and continued on the next patch of grass. Batman hurried to the green, which was blanketed by assorted autumn leaves. No further indentions were visible.
Frustrated, Batman straightened and again looked at the street. "If I were a rider on horseback in Gotham City, where would I go?" he wondered. "The whole thing's crazy. If I wanted to be noticed, I'd head for downtown . . . which is where this road goes.
"But is that what our mysterious horseman wanted?"
He turned to head back to the Batmobile. It was his best clue for now. He would head for downtown and stay alert for any strange notifications of a rider on horseback in downtown Gotham.
Then again, when the kids hadn't been able to agree on what they had seen, maybe everyone else would suffer from the same inability.
Still, if a bunch of weird, conflicting reports came in, that would be as good as keeping track of the horseman's trail. It would be hard to miss woolly mammoths, psychotic clowns, giant cockroaches, or whatever else the citizens of Gotham might dream up.
"Could the answer be group hypnosis?" he thought. "But that's supposed to make an entire group see the same thing, not different things."
Everything smelled funny.
"Wait." He paused on the sidewalk, the realization hitting him. "Yin said that Nygma smelled something strange right before he hallucinated his father attacking him. And now these kids said the same thing. Yin was right—this must be drug-induced. That could cause everyone to see different things. But who would be behind this? And why?!"
He hastened the rest of the way to the Batmobile and leaped in through the opening roof. Whoever was behind this was obviously both extremely dangerous and extremely evil, not even above targeting small children for their sick plot. It had surely been deliberate; no one else had been on that street.
He stepped hard on the gas pedal as he sped in the direction of downtown Gotham.
xxxx
The party had actually been a success. Some guests had realized Yin had brought the real Riddler and not just an imitator, but were willing to give him a chance considering the positive news stories of late. They had found him a fascinating character and had asked him questions on topics ranging from his technology to his costume and his hair. Yin sensed that he didn't always like some of the questions, but he made a conscious effort not to be rude, if for no other reason than that he didn't want to put Yin in a bad spot, and she was grateful.
"That wasn't so bad, was it?" she said to him as she and the other guests were trooping out of the apartment complex's doors and heading for their cars.
"I could have done without the person who asked if I'd been a clean-cut boy at first and only decided to grow my hair out when I rebelled and turned to crime," he grunted. "In this day and age, it's supposed to be a lot more socially acceptable to have long hair if you feel like it."
Yin smirked. "It's not like the days when they wouldn't let you in Disneyland if your hair was even just a little shaggy." She sobered. "But I guess some people are still more conventional. Sometimes I have to deal with that sort of thing too, in my line of work."
He nodded. "I wondered. I, on the other hand, have always been perfectly willing to embrace the idea of women in non-traditional roles. Maybe it comes from people having always expected me to conform to their ideas of what I should be. I never accepted that, as you well know. And all the women I've encountered in progressive roles have been very competent and capable. My Riddlewoman has always been useful to me."
"I still took her out pretty easily when I fought your Riddlepeople," Yin said. "But maybe in other circumstances we would have been more evenly matched."
"You are certainly unique among the conflicts they've come up against. I don't think any other single person has ever managed to defeat all of them at once."
"It probably helped that I'd been taking martial arts since I was a kid," Yin smiled.
"That very likely helped," the Riddler agreed.
"Well, anyway," Yin said, coming back to the original topic, "thanks for not making a scene in there. You looked like you wanted to a couple of times."
"I did. And if it had been any other occasion, I probably would have done it."
"I can believe that," Yin said. "You're usually so outspoken."
"So are you, Yinsey," the Riddler answered.
A sudden scream from a departing guest brought their attention sharply up. People were staring at a rider on a black horse who had just entered the parking lot. And as he drew closer, Yin could see why. "What the . . ."
The Riddler gripped his cane. "Well, that's something you don't see every day. A Halloween prank?"
The rider seemed to be dressed like a living scarecrow, going so far as to wear a mask with glowing red eyes and wickedly grinning mouth and sporting wild blond hair and a hat. At least, Yin hoped it was a mask. It and his hands resembled the color and texture of a blackened corpse. One sleeve was torn, revealing that it was the same all the way up his arm. A heavy chain wrapped around his upper torso, reminiscent of the chains the dead were sometimes depicted as carrying. He was certainly not portraying a friendly neighborhood scarecrow like the sort sold in craft stores at harvest time. In one hand he carried a scythe, which he swung out at several horrified people. The tip of the weapon clipped one fleeing woman's streaming hair, sending a thick lock to the ground.
"This is no prank," Yin said darkly. "That scythe is for real." She ran forward, pulling her gun out of her purse. "Police officer! You're under arrest!"
As the scarecrow turned his attention towards Yin, the guests continued to scream and scatter. The Riddler regarded them in annoyance. Not one of them had the guts to stand their ground. He clutched his cane. He would stay and fight.
The scarecrow seemed delighted for the face-off with the policewoman. For the moment he ignored the Riddler, caught up in his attention to Yin. "Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep," he purred, "and doesn't know where to find them."
Yin stared. "You can recite nursery rhymes all you want to when you're in jail. Come down from there, right now!"
Instead, unafraid of the gun, the scarecrow pulled a strange vial out of his tan overalls pocket. He squirted it point-blank at Yin and rode off into the night while she doubled over and coughed, her eyes watering.
The Riddler rushed over, furious about the escape but fully intending to let the character get away for now. What had been done to Yin could be serious. "Yinsey, are you alright?" he called.
Yin looked up blearily, a hand on her throat. For a moment she saw the Riddler coming towards her, genuinely worried. But then he wasn't the Riddler at all. He was changing, morphing, into a deadly behemoth.
"Clayface?!" she choked out.
Clayface laughed—a deep, throaty, merciless sound. "I really had you goin' there, Yin," he sneered. "But a leopard can't change his spots. You should know that."
"No!" Yin cried. "He has changed. And so have you! Ethan . . ."
"I told you before, you'll never see Ethan Bennett again. Actually, you'll never see anybody again. At least, not on the mortal plane. And neither will he." Clayface outstretched a murky arm, depositing a lifeless body on the asphalt.
Yin paled. "Riddler!" She looked from him up to Clayface. "He had better just be unconscious," she snarled.
"He ain't. He's dead. Just like you're gonna be. And I guess I should tell you as the last thing you hear, you were right about him. I killed him when he was trying to keep me from going after you." Clayface's right arm reshaped into a heavy mace, which he brought down right on her.
Yin screamed. Over the sound of her cries and Clayface's cruel words, she could not hear the Riddler—alive and well—calling to her or feel him trying to take hold of her.
"Yin!" he finally yelled, abandoning all playful nicknames. "Yin, hold still and listen to me. I'm alright. Ethan or Clayface or whomever you're seeing isn't even here! Yin!"
She pulled away from him, envisioning gooey clay seeping through her fingers and blood running down her face from the mace's attack. She had to fight against Clayface. She had to get away from him and find a way to immobilize him. And she had to see whether the Riddler was truly dead, as Clayface had said, or if there might still be hope for him.
In desperation the Riddler finally grabbed her by the upper arms and shook her. "Ellen!"
That seemed to get through, at least somewhat. "Riddler?" She stopped struggling abruptly, staring at him and perhaps really seeing him now, but the sudden halt made her lose her balance. She slipped, falling against him, and in surprise, he fell backwards to the ground. She landed on top of him, her lips pressed against his.
For a moment they just stared at each other, not quite comprehending the ridiculous situation. But then Yin flamed red and pushed away, kneeling on the ground. "Sorry . . . I'm sorry." She gripped her arms, trembling, still confused and half in her delusion.
The Riddler sat up, worried. "I'll call an ambulance," he told her. There was no telling how much of the drug she had inhaled or what its long-term effects might be.
She shut her eyes. "No, don't. I'll be alright." She shook, her hair falling in front of her face. "I never realized how frightened I've been of Clayface someday coming back." Or of you being killed. . . .
The Riddler frowned. "Frightened?" He thought back to his own experience earlier that day. He had imagined his father attacking him, just like in his childhood. . . . "That's it!" he exclaimed. "This madman's drug makes people see their worst fears." His eyes narrowed. "And that is like what was being used in Arkham. It must be; it all makes sense."
"Except why anyone would do something so messed-up," Yin mumbled.
"I still think I should get an ambulance," the Riddler insisted, watching as she continued to shiver. "You may have been sprayed with more of that gas than I was. I didn't have this sort of physical reaction."
"You passed out," Yin replied.
"I thought that was just because my father was beating me unconscious and I reacted accordingly."
"Help me to the car," Yin requested. "I'll put out an APB for Scarecrow and call The Batman to tell him about this. And . . ." She fished in her purse for the keys. "You'd better drive."
The Riddler stood and then reached down, slowly pulling Yin to her feet. She stumbled, but caught herself, and walked towards the car with his help.
"I'm sorry this had to happen," she said. "The evening was going pretty well."
"I think we both knew there might be trouble after what happened to me," the Riddler replied. "It was just a matter of time."
"That's true.
"You know," Yin said after a moment, "that's the first time I've ever kissed anyone who was wearing lipstick." She managed a weak smirk.
He blinked in surprise at the attempt at levity, but then smirked as well. "How was it?"
"Unusual . . . interesting. Not unpleasant." She looked up at him.
He was still smirking. "I aim to please. You're not so bad yourself."
A bit amused and embarrassed both, Yin slid into the passenger side of the car as he helped her with the door. She watched while he retrieved his cane and set it in the back before climbing into the driver's seat.
Suddenly a new thought came to her. "You do have a license, I hope."
"Well, I had a license, before I went to Arkham," he said playfully. Seeing her alarmed expression, he quickly added, "And yes, I've made sure everything is still current. But even if I didn't have a license, I'd still know how to drive."
Yin sighed. "I suppose."
"And right now, it would be less dangerous for me to drive than you." The Riddler started the engine and began to pull out of the parking lot.
As Yin blinked away several dizzy spots in front of her vision, she had to concede to that logic.