"So, that's it."
The Riddler surveyed the room with a proprietor's satisfaction: Batman and Catwoman trading blows with half a dozen supervillains in the corner, the Joker pinned to the floor under Two-Face's knee, Chuck Brown lying in his own blood. He turned and walked toward Poison Ivy to retrieve his hat and cane.
"The war ends with a whimper. Disappointing."
"It's not over yet, you bastard."
He stopped.
Turned around.
Chuck was getting up.
It was not a graceful process. He was pushing himself off the floor one limb at a time, teeth clenched, blood still running freely from his nose and mouth. His vision had gone red at the edges — the world painted in one flat, arterial color. His brain was buzzing. His limbs felt like they were moving through concrete. Everything in his body was filing a formal objection to what he was doing.
He got up anyway.
He'd been here before. Shot during civilian rescue operations. Bones cracked by soldiers under orders to bring him in alive. Dropped from altitude. Beaten on rooftops in the rain. Batman had always arrived a little late, and Chuck had always been on the ground by then, and he'd always eaten a piece of candy, and he'd always gotten back up the next morning and flown out again. Because the people waiting to be rescued didn't care how many times Kite Man had been knocked down. They just needed him to show up.
He had principles about that. Even when people laughed.
His son had almost died. That was why Chuck Brown was standing up right now, and that was the only reason he needed.
He stumbled forward and threw the punch.
The Riddler's dismissive smile returned on cue. He stepped into the swing, same as before, planted his weight, and hit Chuck across the face with a hook that had real power behind it.
Boom.
The impact snapped Chuck's head sideways. Blood and a tooth left his mouth simultaneously. The floor tilted. His mind went white and quiet for a moment — not unconscious, just briefly absent — and he felt himself falling backward.
If I go down this time, can I get back up?
The answer arrived before the question finished forming. Yes. Obviously yes. But getting up wasn't the goal anymore. Getting up was just the prerequisite.
I'm going to rearrange his face.
"Chuck! Hit him!"
The shout came from across the room — loud, sudden, slightly unhinged — and it landed like a physical force. Every head in the room turned: Zsasz, Firefly hovering near the ceiling, even the Joker craning his neck from the floor. All of them staring at the figure in the black robe who had just shouted at the top of his lungs for no apparent tactical reason.
Chuck's vision snapped back into focus.
In the half-second before his body finished falling, he shot his left hand out and grabbed the Riddler's arm — the punching arm, still extended from the follow-through — and locked it against his own chest.
"Do that again," Chuck said. "Go on. I want to see it."
He raised his right fist and drove it into the Riddler's stomach.
The Riddler's eyes went wide. He'd already tensed his core, already raised his own left hand to counter — one clean shot to the head, put the man back on the floor where he belonged. His expression said: you should fall down now.
He hit Chuck.
Chuck hit him.
Boom. Boom.
For a fraction of a second, both impacts registered normally. Then something went wrong on the Riddler's side of the equation.
A wall of force detonated through his abdomen. Not the impact of a fist — the impact of something considerably larger and less reasonable. He felt it in his spine, his ribs, the back of his throat. A mouthful of blood left him before he'd processed what was happening. He staggered, blinking, grip gone.
"Cough—" He stared at Chuck. "Cough. Your fist. How did you—"
"Shut up."
Chuck, dizzy and loose and running entirely on forward momentum, grabbed him by the lapel and hit him in the face.
This one was lighter. It still removed six teeth.
The Riddler's jaw swung at a new and anatomically incorrect angle. He stood there for a moment, blood coursing down his chin, the inside of his skull ringing like a bell. His legs were doing the thing where they moved without transmitting any information to the rest of the nervous system. He began to fall.
Chuck caught him by the collar and held him up.
"It's not over yet," he said, breathing hard, and pulled off the gloves. Pulled off the ring. He looked at both items in his blood-covered hand for a moment, then looked back at the Riddler's ruined face.
The night before the final battle. Chuck's living room.
"You're not a brawler, Chuck." Jude sat across from him in the black robe, hood down, looking faintly tired. "You know that. I know that. So tomorrow, when the fight starts — you get out. Don't participate. Get clear."
Chuck looked at him. Then he smiled and pulled Jude into a hug, which Jude accepted with the tolerance of a man who had learned to accept hugs.
"I'm grateful. I mean it. I've never really had—" Chuck pulled back. "You're the only friend I've actually had. In a long time." He paused. "But I can't agree to that."
Jude waited.
"I need to find the Riddler," Chuck said, in the earnest tone he reserved for things he'd already fully decided. "I need to find him, and I need to beat his face so badly that even his mother doesn't recognize him, and I need him to understand that he should not have touched my family."
"You're not a crime boss," Jude said. "You know that, right? Normal people don't talk like that."
Chuck's eyes didn't change.
Jude looked at him for a long moment. Yeah. I'm not moving this rock.
He reached into the folds of the black robe and produced a pair of gloves and a ring. He set them on the table between them.
"Fine," he said. "When it's your family, you're unreasonable and there's no point arguing. So take these."
Chuck picked them up, turning them over. "What are these for?"
"Remember the lollipops? Same category of thing. Special effects."
Chuck looked at the ring.
ASSET SHOP — COMBAT RING Price: $10,000 asset points Effect: Increases unarmed combat damage by +10. Note: Putting aside pure function — doesn't this at least have some collector appeal?
He looked at the gloves.
ASSET SHOP — COMBAT GLOVES Price: $80,000 asset points Effect: Increases unarmed combat damage by +20. Maximum HP +100. Note: Marginally useful. You're at the same table as the ring.
Together, the two items took a person with roughly four points of baseline unarmed damage and multiplied it by eight — and more than doubled their capacity to absorb punishment before going down. That was why the Riddler's first hook had not ended the fight. That was why Chuck had gotten back up.
"One warning," Jude said, leaning forward slightly. "You're around fifty kilograms of punching force on a good day. These things don't change your technique or your footwork. What they change is the number at the end." He paused. "When you hit someone — hold back. You can smash his face. Don't kill him."
Chuck turned the ring over in his palm.
"Understood," he said.
He put it on.