Batman (29 page)

A second chance
, Batman thought.
This is where the Riddler outsmarted himself. He made the guardian armor too strong for a single missile to destroy it. Part of the credit—most of it, actually—goes to Rā’s al Ghūl. Riddler isn’t in his league. He knows it, too, and it’ll make him desperate. That makes him as dangerous as anyone we’ve faced.

The missile had done some damage, though. That much was obvious. The faceplate was cracked and one of the suit’s legs dragged. Through the cracks, Batman saw that Robin’s eyes were open and blood was dripping from his nose down over his mouth and chin.

The guardian armor gained its footing on the street.

Batman started to get his hearing back. He thought Gordon might have said something to him, but he didn’t respond because Robin started voicing another riddle.

“A farmer is traveling with a fox, a chicken, and a bag of chicken feed,”
he shouted. Flecks of blood spattered the inside of the faceplate.
“He comes to a river and must cross it in a small boat that will only carry him and one other thing. If he leaves the fox with the chicken, the chicken will be the fox’s dinner. If he leaves the chicken with the feed, the chicken will eat it. How does he get all three things across the river and on to market?”

Batman had heard a hundred variations on this puzzle. The trick was in realizing that you didn’t have to bring the boat back empty every trip. Lateral thinking. You took the chicken over, then came back… brought the fox over, then brought the chicken back… brought the feed over and left it, then went back for the chicken. That way the chicken was never left with either the fox or the feed.

The long way was the only way.

This was a hint. There were more steps in the armor’s puzzle. In his rush to take a direct course to the solution, he still was missing something. So what was it? He’d accounted for the word puzzle, the chemical puzzle, the flood puzzle, the tea room puzzle…

Of course. The puzzle that had forced them to work in parallel.

Killer Croc’s tooth.

Which—like the hole in the mounting shaft in the clock face—just happened to be grooved, slightly irregular in cross section, and a little bit curved.

And which Batman still had in a compartment of his Utility Belt.

“Keep it. Make a Christmas ornament out of it or something,”
Killer Croc had said. Batman had a sudden deep certainty that Killer Croc had been in on the whole plan from the beginning. He had been coached to refuse the tooth. The Riddler, knowing Batman’s attention to detail, must have guessed that he would keep it with him.

The Riddler had anticipated everything to near perfection. When this was all over, Batman realized, he was going to have to reconsider his opinion of the man known as Edward Nigma. It wasn’t a matter of comparing him to the Joker, but of acknowledging that he was stepping into his own class as a sociopathic mastermind.

The guardian raised both arms and activated the palm beams. One of them sputtered and strobed before the lens shattered and sparks flared in the gauntlet. The other beam lanced out, barely missing Batman and shearing away a row of flagpoles hanging from the facade of a hotel. Burning strips of cloth fluttered to the street.

Batman ran toward the armor, leaping over the crater and climbing up the malfunctioning arm. Wrapping one of his own arms around the bicep, he clung to the armor’s back again, hoping his presence would keep Gordon from ordering another strike.

All he needed was a moment’s hesitation.

“Cross with the chicken!” he shouted. “Come back for the fox. Cross with the fox, take the chicken back. Leave the chicken, cross with the feed. Come back for the chicken.”

The guardian armor stopped. But unlike the other times, Robin immediately shouted out another riddle, this time in a sing-song voice almost like a nursery rhyme.

“As I was going to St. Ives

I met a man with seven wives.

The seven wives had seven sacks,

The seven sacks had seven cats…”

“You better clear out of there, Batman,”
Gordon said in his ear, blocking out Robin’s recitation.
“We’re going to finish this thing off.”

“This
thing
is Robin, Commissioner,” Batman spat back. “And I just solved the puzzle.”

“You’ve had all the time I can give you, and more. This city can’t afford to lose you, Batman, but it also can’t allow us to hesitate. Get out of there!”

“I’m not going to do that, Commissioner.” The suit lurched under him, nearly throwing him off. It spun around as he heard the sound of a helicopter coming closer. It was the one he’d seen backing up the first, only now it was taking up a firing position.

“Don’t do this, Gordon!” Batman shouted over the sound of the rotors. His own compromised hearing made it hard for him to tell how loud he was.

He’d also missed part of the rhyme.

“Say it again!” he screamed at the helmet. Robin looked at him but didn’t speak. “You have to say it again!”

Nothing.

“I’ve got you covered,”
Oracle said.
“Listen up.”
There was a click in Batman’s ear and then he picked up the recorded sound of Robin saying the last three lines.

“The seven cats had seven kits.

Kits, cats, sacks, and wives
,

How many were going to St. Ives?”

“That one’s easy,” Batman said.

“Fire!” Gordon roared.

The helicopter rocked as the missile blasted out of its launch tube. But this time Batman didn’t jump off the guardian. He already had the Batmobile’s remote control keyed in, and he stabbed a button as he ducked down behind the armor’s torso, hoping he’d gotten the timing right.

Engine revved up to a scream, the Batmobile skidded out of a side street, taking the turn hard enough that it went up on two wheels. If it had been on four, the missile would have passed right over it on its shallow angle of descent toward the target: the guardian armor’s center of mass. Up on its side, however, the Batmobile was nearly five feet tall.

The missile struck it squarely on the windshield.

The Batmobile was sufficiently armored to shrug off small arms and even portable weaponry and explosives. Rocket-propelled grenades might knock it over, but they wouldn’t hurt it much. But the missiles fired by the Gotham City’s Police Department were military-grade air-to-surface missiles designed to punch through the outer armor of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and small ships.

This particular missile punched through the armored windshield without any decrease in its velocity. The impact armed the two-stage trigger in its warhead, which detonated on the second impact—with the armored frame of the Batmobile’s passenger seat.

Because the vehicle was up on two wheels, Batman missed the most spectacular part of the explosion. He did see all of the side windows blow out in gouts of fire, and other similar gouts blow out the windows angled down toward the pavement. They acted as rockets, and the pavement turned into a launch pad.

The Batmobile leapt up from the ground and started spinning end over end as its forward velocity turned into angular momentum. It pinwheeled across the street, shedding pieces of its interior and undercarriage and arcing over Batman and the guardian on a diagonal flight path across Henry Avenue. It hit the pillars supporting a shallow arched entry to a pedestrian arcade, crushing them.

Still trailing fire, the Batmobile rolled down the arcade, smashing aside empty vendor stalls. As it came to a rocking, groaning halt, the arcade roof caved in.

The reinforced chassis and armored passenger compartment had absorbed most of the missile’s explosive force, but the noise was still loud enough to set Batman’s ears ringing again. Enough of the blast wave reached the guardian that it nearly tipped over backward onto Batman. Having already felt its weight once that day, he was glad when it regained its balance.

It was about time to prototype a new Batmobile anyway.

The guardian armor raised one arm.

Another helicopter hove into view.

If Gordon was trying to warn Batman, he couldn’t hear it.

He stood up. “So. How many were going to St. Ives?” He could barely hear himself, and thought the explosion might have shorted out his comm link, which meant no one else could hear him either. But he answered the riddle anyway.

He’d come too far not to do so.

“One.”

As he said the word, he jumped straight up. At the peak of the jump, in that suspended moment before he began to fall again, he jammed the tooth into the circular opening and twisted it until its curve matched the inside of the asymmetrical plug.

There was a sharp electrical snap and a tiny blue arc from the socket numbed Batman’s hand. The suit’s outstretched arm dropped and the energy beam’s lens went dark. It slumped, inert but still upright. A soft pop from the helmet was followed by a hiss as the collar ring unlocked and the air pressure inside the suit equalized to the outside.

He’d done it.

He’d solved the puzzle.

“Hold your fire!” he shouted. He didn’t know if Gordon had heard him. A third helicopter replaced the one that had just fired its rocket, fresh rotor wash kicking up trash and dust from the street.

It didn’t fire.

Batman leaped over the motionless armor’s shoulders and held his arms up, interposing himself between the helicopter and Robin. It occurred to him in passing that this might not be the best idea, given how some Gotham City cops felt about him… but he did it anyway.

“Commissioner! Hold your fire!”

Dead air over his comm link.

The armor’s helmet popped loose. Batman took a step back and turned to reach up and pull it off. He threw it away to bounce among the scattered remains of the Batmobile and the rubble of the arcade. Robin looked over at him.

“You there?” Batman asked.

“Yeah,” Robin said. “I’m here—at least I think I am. I guess it’s true what they say.” He managed a weak grin. “You are what you eat.”

Batman was about to ask him what he meant by that when they heard the Riddler’s voice again.

by
Rafael Del Toro
, GothamGazette.com

“Imago!” the Riddler called. “You must have solved it by now, or we wouldn’t be speaking—would we, O most worthy adversaries?”

Batman looked up and across the street. There, standing on the roof of the same building where Batman had fought Deadshot, was the Riddler in his loose-fitting green frock coat—covered in question marks—and slacks, ludicrous bowler, green boots and glasses, his tie flapping in the wind.

“Batman! I must salute your accomplishment!” he continued. “As well as those of your doughty assistant, young Robin! These were stern tests, and you survived them all.”

Before Batman could launch himself toward his opponent, Robin spoke.

“Wait. Help me get out of this thing.”

“Riddler won’t wait,” Batman said. Robin banged the suit’s gauntlets against its torso in frustration. The helicopter hovered, and for a moment he wished it would use its missile on that rooftop where the Riddler stood mocking them.

Shoot him!
he thought.

Then the moment passed and he knew it for what it was—weakness. It was weakness to wish for someone else to take your responsibilities from you, and weakness to wish for someone else to kill when you had sworn not to.

Then Batman had an idea. The symmetry of the imago puzzle wasn’t yet quite complete. Robin had not emerged from the cocoon of the guardian armor. The key was probably in the puzzle built into the armor. Quickly Batman went around to the back of the suit and twisted Killer Croc’s tooth in the clock face.

With a series of clicks and pops, the suit fell apart. First its arms disconnected at the shoulder, and Robin shrugged them off. Then its torso separated into halves and fell away. The pelvic section snapped open and then the legs, each piece clanging on the street. Robin kicked the heavy boots off.

He fell to his knees, and for a moment Batman thought his injuries were more serious than they had appeared. Then he looked up, an expression of determination on his face, and he pulled himself to his feet. Wiped the blood from his face, staining his glove.