"It's over, Riddler."
Batman's voice carried the particular flatness of a man who meant it. "This city is scarred enough. This war ends today."
"Unrealistic dreams." The Riddler's scoff was almost affectionate. "Let's try a riddle instead. Little Tommy is dead. There are food scraps on his lips. His spine is broken." He tilted his head. "What happened?"
Batman said nothing. He watched the Riddler the way he watched everything — patiently, looking for the angle.
"Tommy is a mouse," the Riddler said. "A mouse caught in a trap."
And then the window filled with people.
They came through the gap in the glass one by one: Solomon Grundy, Mr. Freeze, Killer Croc, Two-Face, Deadshot, Deathstroke, Man-Bat. Seven figures who were supposed to be in GCPD holding, prepped for Arkham transfer. The Riddler's mole inside the department had apparently been busy.
The room's geometry shifted in an instant.
"I've spent a great deal in this war," the Riddler said, unhurried, while his people spread out and the available space contracted accordingly. "But it was worth every piece. Did you genuinely believe I'd walk into the Joker's building without accounting for you?" He spread his hands. "I have nothing but respect for you, Batman. I know exactly what you're capable of — which is precisely why I prepared a gift." He gestured at the figures now fanning out to flank Batman, Catwoman, and Chuck. "Consider it an expression of that respect."
From the floor, the Joker let out a short, ugly laugh. "If you've got so many pieces on the board, why not call back the ones you've already lost? Oh wait—" He turned his head and spat blood. "Some of them didn't want to come back, did they? They know a losing position when they see one."
"The ones I've lost were taken by Batman." The Riddler looked down at him with serene contempt. "If you'd managed to hold onto your own people, you wouldn't be lying on the floor contributing nothing to this conversation." He turned back to Batman. "As for the ones I still have—they're sufficient."
He straightened up. Something in his posture shifted — the showmanship fell away, and what was underneath it was colder and more focused.
"You said it yourself. Time to end this." The smile returned, thinner now. "Today, this war ends with one winner. Gotham belongs to the Riddler. And the Riddler has the honor of being the man who killed Batman."
Behind him, Killer Croc flexed his claws. Mr. Freeze raised the gun. Deathstroke drew both blades with a sound like a whisper. Catwoman and Chuck found themselves boxed in from three angles, no clean line to anywhere. Two-Face had the Joker pinned to the floor with one knee, the coin nowhere in sight.
The Riddler let his gaze travel to Chuck.
"As for you, Kite Man." The title came out as a kind of clinical dismissal. "I genuinely cannot work out what function you serve here. Batman called you in as padding — something to absorb an impact so the people who actually matter could keep moving." He paused. "Has that possibility occurred to you?"
Chuck's fists were already clenched.
"You put your hands on my son." His voice was very quiet. "That's why I'm here."
Good, Jude thought, watching from the edge of the room. We've made it through gunfire and explosions and everything this city could throw at us. Don't fold now.
"I'm going to hit you so hard your mother won't know the face," Chuck said.
"How charming." The Riddler passed his hat and cane to Poison Ivy without looking at her and walked toward Chuck with his hands loose at his sides. "Don't misread the situation. I'm not doing you the favor of a fair fight because the numbers favor me. I'm doing it because even one-on-one, you'd lose. I could let you hit me first, and the only thing that would suffer is my suit." He stopped three feet away. "Charlie is waiting. Why don't you come say hello?"
"You—"
Chuck charged.
Grundy's hands appeared from nowhere — enormous, unhesitating — and lifted him clean off the ground. Chuck thrashed, arms and legs finding nothing, and Grundy held him effortlessly in the air.
The Riddler waved one hand. Grundy set him down.
"Let him come," Nygma said. "What's he going to do with it?"
Batman and Catwoman were already at the edge of movement — Jude could see it, the coiled readiness in both of them — but Deathstroke, Deadshot, and Croc had positioned themselves exactly to make any lunge toward Chuck a commitment that would cost them everything else. They couldn't help him. Not without losing the room entirely.
Chuck swung.
The Riddler watched the punch come in with the attentive, slightly disappointed expression of a man grading a very poor essay. The footwork was amateur. The weight transfer was off. The telegraphing was almost instructive in its clarity. He stepped to one side — minimal movement, just enough — and the fist passed wide.
Then he rotated his hips and delivered a hook to the unprotected lower half of Chuck's face.
The sound was flat and final.
Chuck went down hard, the impact reverberating through the floorboards. He lay still for a moment that stretched.
"Batman had you training." The Riddler crouched beside him and pulled the helmet off, turning it over in his hands, studying the material with the same detached interest he gave to everything. "New armor — look at this. Thin, flexible, high tensile strength. Genuinely good engineering." He set it aside. "And it means absolutely nothing, because armor doesn't fix the person inside it."
He grabbed a fistful of Chuck's hair and lifted his head from the floor.
"One punch, Chuck. That's all it took." His voice was almost gentle. "You have nothing. You've always had nothing. I didn't even have to move to avoid you — that's how powerless that punch was."
He drove Chuck's face into the floor.
Blood spread across the boards from his nose and mouth. A moment later, Chuck's body went slack — shock or unconsciousness, or both — and the Riddler stood, brushing off his jacket.
Batman and Catwoman moved at the same moment, finally past the threshold of what they could hold back. They drove toward Chuck and immediately met resistance from three directions at once — the room erupting into a collision of bodies and weapons, controlled chaos spinning outward from the center.
The Riddler straightened his tie.
"Well." He looked at Chuck on the floor. "I suppose I shouldn't have expected much."