"Wait.. It's a magnet. Judging by the direction the handcuffs shifted, that magnet must be my cufflink."
Harvey thought to himself, eyes still fixed on the metal bracelet circling his wrist. The faint tug had been unmistakable the moment the patrol car turned a corner.
"That coin is made of pure silver. Logically, it shouldn't respond to magnets at all. Kaitou Kid most likely coated the reverse side with some magnetic material that's difficult to see with the naked eye. No matter how many times it's tossed, the coin is bound to come up heads."
He pictured the thin, almost invisible layer—perhaps a ferrous paint or a microscopic dusting—applied with surgical precision.
"He must have used a very small amount of this material, because if the magnetism were too obvious, I would have noticed it earlier. But then again, he didn't need much. His goal was to control the outcome of the coin toss, not to make the coin stick to the magnet like a cheap carnival trick."
As for the times Two-Face had let the coin fall onto the jury's table during the earlier chaos, the cufflink's magnet naturally would not reach that far. But that was actually even simpler. Kaitou Kid only needed to place small, flat magnets beneath the table beforehand—perhaps taped under the edge or slipped into a crack.
Doing it that way might have been even more discreet than relying on a cufflink. No sleight of hand required in plain view. Just preparation and patience.
"No wonder Kaitou Kid said I'd understand soon. He foresaw that I would notice the anomaly with the handcuffs."
The secret of the coin toss was thus unraveled. The most critical link that had caused Two-Face's emotional breakdown turned out to rely on an unexpectedly simple principle: basic physics dressed up in showmanship.
The revelation should have felt anticlimactic. Instead it left Harvey quietly unsettled. All that torment, all that spiraling madness, built on nothing more elaborate than a hidden magnet and a sleight-of-hand coating. Two-Face had been dismantled not by philosophy or therapy or even Batman's fists, but by a cheap magician's prop.
Now, a new question arose.
When did Kaitou Kid swap Two-Face's cufflink for a magnet?
In Harvey's memory, before the coin came up heads seven times in a row, he should not have had any close contact with Kaitou Kid. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Kaitou Kid had only truly appeared after Two-Face finished tossing the coin.
Before that, at most, Catwoman had caught Kaitou Kid and pinned him to the ground.
At the time, although Two-Face had not examined the captured figure very closely—too busy gloating, too confident in his control—swapping the cufflink on Two-Face's sleeve while lying unconscious on the ground, and simultaneously tampering with the coin without anyone noticing... no matter how he thought about it, it seemed impossible.
Unless Kaitou Kid were the Flash, such a large range of movement could not have gone unnoticed.
"Wait. Speaking of Catwoman, I remember she seemed to..."
Just then, a spark of inspiration struck Harvey.
He recalled that while Two-Face was looking down at the prone Kaitou Kid, Catwoman had stepped close and patted him on the shoulder while asking for her payment. The gesture had been casual, almost affectionate in its familiarity. He and Selina had known each other for many years and had a wealth of experience working together, so a simple touch was not suspicious at all.
But at this moment, Harvey suddenly realized a fact.
That was the only instance of close physical contact with Two-Face that day. The only person who had both the opportunity and the pretext to make all the preparations was Catwoman.
"Could Selina have colluded with Kaitou Kid?"
As soon as the thought surfaced, Harvey dismissed it. He knew what kind of person Catwoman was.
"No. While Selina isn't exactly a loyal partner who strictly adheres to the spirit of a contract, she wouldn't go so far as to team up with a stranger against her own employer. Even if the opponent were Batman, Selina wouldn't defect so easily. Pride alone would stop her."
"...Is it possible that the Selina who brought Kaitou Kid wasn't actually her at all?"
...
Meanwhile, at the ACE Chemical Plant.
A mature woman with a voluptuous figure, dressed in a sleek black stealth suit, stood on the roof, craning her neck as she looked into the distance toward the faint glow of Gotham's skyline.
"It seems I've really grown old, to suffer such a big loss at the hands of a newly debuted brat."
Catwoman sighed softly, the sound almost lost in the low industrial hum rising from below.
Not far behind her, a pile of white clothing lay scattered across the gravel: gloves, suit jacket, trousers, cape, polished leather shoes, and the signature top hat.
The trail stretched back for quite a distance, as if the garments had been discarded one by one while someone walked away.
"This damn outfit is so hard to take off. How on earth does he manage to change his whole wardrobe in a flash? He should teach this skill to every lady who wears complicated clothes and loves changing outfits."
As it turned out, Catwoman had not knocked out Kaitou Kid. On the contrary, she was the one who had been knocked unconscious—quickly, cleanly, and without a mark to show for it.
Kaitou Kid had put his clothes on her, then changed into Catwoman's outfit to disguise himself as her, creating the perfect illusion that Kaitou Kid had been captured by Catwoman.
In the guise of Selina Kyle, he had approached Two-Face, swapped the cufflink for a magnet during that casual shoulder pat, and discreetly taken the coin long enough to apply the special magnetic coating to its reverse side.
After finishing the job, he left the scene under the perfect pretext of collecting his payment, waiting for the right moment to officially appear as himself.
As for the outfit that originally belonged to Catwoman and had been worn by Kaitou Kid, he had neatly folded it and hidden it on the roof, even deliberately leaving clues—a dropped glove here, a glint of white cape there—to lead her straight to this spot.
"Then again, for Kaitou Kid to be able to fit into my bodysuit, his figure must be a bit too slender. If Kaitou Kid's true identity isn't a woman, then he's definitely a scrawny guy."
Catwoman speculated, lips curling in faint amusement despite herself.
However, it was remarkable that Kaitou Kid could disguise Catwoman as himself so perfectly that even Robin, who had faced off against Kaitou Kid multiple times, could not tell the difference.
One could say that Kaitou Kid's skills surpassed those of most shapeshifters. While most of them could only change themselves, he could make others change—and do so in an incredibly short amount of time.
Not becoming a film makeup artist was simply a waste of his talent.
Or perhaps he was saving the jobs of countless makeup artists. Heh.
"The Kaitou Kid you captured on the ground earlier really was you, Selina Kyle."
Just then, a voice rang out unexpectedly from behind Catwoman.
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