"Like a pig that wanders out of the pen and into the slaughterhouse," the Riddler replied, with the clipped precision of a man who had decided to be contemptuous about this. "Yes, knowing you're about to be slaughtered is unpleasant. But I'm not a pig. I refuse to die without understanding what happened to me." His eyes were fixed on Jude's mask. "I've spent too long on this to accept a mystery at the end."
He let the silence sit for a moment.
"You're not Thor, by the way. I checked him thoroughly — a functional alcoholic with a self-medication habit and no organizational capacity whatsoever. That man couldn't turn a single person against his own interests, let alone coordinate Deathstroke, Deadshot, and half my roster." He tilted his head. "So. One more time. Who are you?"
"The money came from other people," Jude offered. "There are a lot of parties who wanted this war stopped. I was more of a — coordinator."
The Riddler ignored this entirely. "Tell me who you are."
"Boss," Jude said, "I'm your little brother."
The word landed.
The Riddler had been doing well — composure largely recovered, voice controlled, gun at his side. The word "boss" removed all of that in approximately one second. The particular inflection, the particular cheerful idiocy of the delivery, the sheer texture of it — something in his nervous system responded before his brain had finished processing the input.
He drew the gun from his waist and pressed the barrel under Jude's chin in one motion.
"Tell me who you are," he said, very quietly, "or say goodbye to the five hundred million."
Jude scratched the back of his head.
"Actually," he said, looking around the room, "is there anyone here with a outstanding grievance against Nygma? Serious offers only. Five hundred million, payable immediately. Money for money, life for life — totally aboveboard, extremely trustworthy, satisfaction guaranteed."
What a business model. If anyone takes that deal, you've already won.
The Riddler's grip on the pistol tightened. He could feel the specific urge to fire twice forming in his trigger finger.
"Three seconds," he said.
Catwoman swept the room with a quick assessment. Batman was still somewhere in his own head — wherever he'd gone after the knife — and probably couldn't be counted on to intercept. Who else? Who was fast enough, and confident enough, to stop a bullet on a three-second countdown?
"Okay, okay." Jude sighed with the weight of a man making a genuinely difficult personal sacrifice. "At least transfer the money first. Then we'll sort out the other thing."
He reached up and pulled off the black robe.
The room went quiet.
Where the robe had been was a person — a perfectly ordinary-looking person — without the substantial belly that had been a defining feature of The Bike Stripper's silhouette since his first appearance in the East District.
Killer Croc stared. "That's not right," he said, with genuine bewilderment. "He was visibly pregnant when he talked to me."
"Is that a new weight-loss compound?" Poison Ivy asked, genuinely interested. "Because the results are remarkable. Where do I purchase that?"
The Riddler said nothing.
He was looking at the figure beneath the robe with an expression that had gone very still. The shape was familiar. The posture was familiar. Something about the way the person held their weight, the angle of the shoulders—
A belly can be faked. A person can be switched.
"Okay." The voice from under the mask was younger than expected. Lighter. "You want to know who I am."
The Joker's eyes narrowed slightly.
He knew that voice.
Jude removed the mask.
The Riddler's face went yellow. Then white. Then a deep, saturated red — the specific red of a man experiencing a cascade of realizations that are each individually worse than the last, arriving in rapid sequence.
The silence lasted exactly as long as it took him to connect every thread.
"Boss," Jude said pleasantly. "Good to see you again."
The memories came back in order, each one snapping into place with a small, terrible click.
What are you saying in gibberish? I can't understand you. — A helmeted officer in the prison stairwell, fumbling with a vest, dropping keys— destroying a flawless escape plan through the application of pure, unearned incompetence.
I followed after I saw the clown crash — I was just about to ask, what happened to your hand? Why does it look like a chicken claw? — A man with a fake gun, standing in a building that should have been empty, mocking the Riddler's intelligence with his luck.
The Peppa Pig mask. The rooftop. Is it strange that middle-aged people like Peppa Pig?
Boss, Slade has been captured by Batman. Boss, Jonathan and three others are gone. Boss, the freakish bike stripper is back. Boss, I'm back again.
Every report. Every setback. Every moment where the plan had developed an unexpected complication in the shape of one ordinary, apparently incompetent, inexplicably impossible-to-kill person.
All of it. The same face.
"I should have known." His voice was barely above a whisper. "This feeling — this exact, specific feeling — I should have recognized it. I should have known." The whisper gained volume. "This shamelessness, this style — I should have known immediately!"
Something snapped in the architecture of Edward Nygma's composure. Perhaps it was the last load-bearing wall.
"Who the hell let you come back?!"
The gun swung toward Jude. His voice had left the register of controlled fury and entered somewhere higher and less managed.
"Who the hell — let you — come back?!"
"You deserve to die! You deserve to die, you absolute—"
"HAHAHAHA—"
The Joker had been holding it together for approximately four seconds. He stopped holding it together.
The laugh that came out of him was the full version — the genuine, helpless, building-filling laugh that had been absent for over a year, now arriving all at once like a dam giving way. He doubled forward. Straightened. Doubled forward again. His legs stopped being reliable and he went down to one knee, then both, then gave up entirely and sat on the floor with his hands over his face, shoulders shaking.
"That's it!" he managed between eruptions. "That's the whole thing! The new recruit from nowhere — he had the Riddler going in circles this whole time! He — Nygma, you absolute— hahahaha — you got completely played by this guy?! HAHAHAHA—"
He rolled sideways. He was making sounds that were no longer fully words.
"Riddler, you're so lame!"
The Riddler heard this. The Riddler processed this. The Riddler's last functional constraint on his behavior dissolved.
"Five hundred million!" He fired at Jude and the words came out simultaneously. "Five hundred million to whoever kills him right NOW!"
Firefly dropped from the ceiling. Zsasz moved from the side. Neither of them had won today, and the prospect of a consolation prize with a lot of zeroes on it was genuinely appealing — and besides, Jude was a traitor, which simplified the moral calculation considerably.
They covered about four feet.
Then the rest of the room moved.
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