Killer Croc's fist connected with the ceiling instead of Firefly — but the impact alone was enough to send a visible shockwave through the air, the drywall cratering and the whole floor vibrating with it. Firefly pulled up fast, flamethrower swinging toward the massive obstruction blocking his path.
"Out of my way, you stupid—"
The freeze beam took him from the side.
Mr. Freeze had been quiet in the corner and had timed it exactly. Firefly's attention had been entirely on Croc, which was the natural error — the larger, more visible threat always pulled focus first. He twisted sideways and the beam swept across him rather than through him, which saved his life and destroyed his afternoon. The homemade flight armor was a remarkable piece of engineering. It could handle heat. It could handle conventional gunfire. What it could not handle was temperatures approaching absolute zero, because no homemade anything could handle temperatures approaching absolute zero. Half the suit seized up with a sound like a gunshot, and Firefly dropped to the floor and stayed there.
Zsasz, who had been coming up behind Firefly with a blade, stopped. He looked at Killer Croc directly in front of him. He looked at the dagger in his hand. He ran a brief tactical assessment of what a dagger accomplished against crocodile hide.
Deadshot settled the question by shooting him twice in the legs before he'd finished thinking about it. Both shots, one sound, two clean breaks. Zsasz went down with a noise that bounced off the walls and didn't get up.
"I understand he's always believed a knife beats a gun," Deadshot said, blowing the smoke from the barrel. "Curious whether that position has evolved."
The math was simple and final.
Firefly down. Zsasz down. The Riddler pinned to the floor beside the Joker, who was wrapped comprehensively in Poison Ivy's vines. Every other supervillain in the room standing on the wrong side of the equation from the two men who'd started this war.
"It's over, Nygma." Batman stood above him. "You're out of moves."
"The hired guns," Catwoman said, from across the room. "He still has a small army of them on the street. If word gets out their boss is down, Gotham turns into thirty different gang wars overnight."
"It won't." Batman looked at the Riddler. "He's going to help us consolidate them. One location, one night."
Everyone's eyes went to the Riddler, who was face-down on the floor delivering a sustained, comprehensive threat in Jude's general direction.
"—I will find every person you have ever spoken to, I will find out where you sleep, I will personally—"
Jude scratched the back of his head. "He seems, and I don't want to project, a little bit angry. I'm not sure he's in the collaborative spirit right now."
"He doesn't need to be." Batman crouched down and hit the Riddler cleanly at the base of the skull. Nygma went limp. "We just need someone who can pass as him long enough to call the troops together. The real Riddler's cooperation is optional."
He stood.
His gaze found Jude.
"Why are you looking at me like that."
"Someone who knows his mannerisms. Someone who can adapt in the field. Someone the street-level soldiers have never seen up close."
"That description could fit several—"
"Someone currently dressed in a black robe who has spent the last several weeks impersonating people for a living."
Jude looked at the unconscious Riddler. Looked at the green suit. Looked back at Batman.
"You have to pay me," he said.
"Naturally."
Thirty minutes later, the Riddler emerged from the building.
Green suit. Golden cane. The right posture — slightly elevated, slightly contemptuous, the bearing of a man accustomed to being the smartest person in any given location. Beside him, a loose procession of supervillains. Behind them, bound and under guard: the Joker, the freakish biker in the black robe, Firefly, and Zsasz. And at the edges, trying to look captured rather than operational: Batman, Catwoman, and Chuck.
The crowd waiting outside was substantial. It had been a long night, and they were ready to be told they'd won.
"These four are traitors," the Riddler told them, gesturing at the bound figures with the cane. "Batman and his companions have also been taken. Tomorrow, I'll deal with all of them personally." He let the pause breathe exactly the right amount. "And today — Gotham is ours."
The cheer was immediate and loud and entirely genuine. These were people who'd been sleeping in shifts for weeks, running patrols through a city at war, taking orders from a man they'd mostly never seen. The news that it was over hit them the way good news hits people who'd stopped expecting it.
The Riddler walked into the crowd at an unhurried pace and let them close around him.
"One more thing," he said, as if it had just occurred to him. "Tonight. Grand Theatre. I'm giving a speech. Everyone attends. Anyone who can't make it — I'll assume they have a reason I won't find satisfying."
"No problem, Riddler," his closest lieutenant said, with complete confidence. "Everyone will be there."
The Riddler smiled.
That evening, Poison Ivy arrived at the Grand Theatre before anyone else.
The Riddler's speech ran for thirty minutes. He kept the crowd engaged, hit his marks, didn't rush. At the twenty-eight minute mark, the hallucinogenic compound that Ivy's plants had been quietly dispersing through the theater's ventilation since well before the doors opened reached effective concentration in the enclosed space.
At the thirty minute mark, several hundred armed men sat down simultaneously and did not get up.
"Police," Jude called from the stage, pulling off the top hat, "you can come in now."
The doors opened. Gotham City Police Department officers filed in from four entrances in gas masks, moving with the organized efficiency of people who had been waiting outside for a while and were glad to finally have something to do. Handcuffs. Weapons collected. Bodies sorted. Within forty minutes, the Riddler's entire hired army was in zip ties on the floor of the theater, ready for processing.
The next morning, Gotham was overcast again. The brief, disorienting spell of clear skies had ended sometime during the night, and the familiar gray-brown cloud cover had returned, settling back over the skyline like a cat reclaiming its preferred spot. Whatever the city had been doing with sunshine, it had apparently decided it wasn't working for it.
The news ran all morning.
"Through the efforts of the Gotham City Police Department — and with the assistance of Batman and Kite Man — the Riddler and the Joker are both in custody, along with thousands of hired personnel. The criminals have been distributed to police stations across multiple cities to manage the load on Gotham's corrections system."
"I'll admit I underestimated the GCPD. They're tougher than they look. Even after the bombing, they held together and helped turn the tide. Commissioner Gordon and his officers deserve something from the city for what they went through. A bonus, at minimum. A statue, ideally."
"Frank, has your opinion on Batman changed at all?"
"Bill, I won't say he contributed nothing. He contributed some things. But he's still technically a criminal operating outside the law. And the real work — the rebuilding, the restoration — that's not his department. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne donated the full five hundred million recovered by police to Gotham reconstruction. That's a real, documented, constructive contribution."
"Frank, I keep waiting for you to run out of road on this position, and every time you find more road. It's remarkable. It genuinely might be a medical condition."
"I'm not saying Batman is—"
"Do you want me to look up the Guinness record application process? I'm asking sincerely."