Disguising oneself was a simple matter for Jude Sharp. With Advanced Disguise Proficiency, he could become someone else in thirty minutes with the right prosthetics, makeup, and posture.
Theoretically, infiltrating the Riddler's organization should have been easy. However, Jude had deliberately chosen not to use his disguise skills.
The reason was ruthlessly practical. Advanced Disguise could fool most people, but fake was still fake. If an expert pulled at your face, checked for prosthetics, or examined your bone structure, the disguise would be exposed. Edward Nygma was exactly that kind of paranoid, obsessive analyst. He would probe until he found the truth.
The best way to deal with the Riddler was not to be clever in the way he expected. It required something outside his frame of reference entirely.
SYSTEM ITEM PURCHASED:
Item: Polyjuice Potion
Price: $20,000 USD Asset Points
Note: A top-notch product from Professor Snape. It allows for a complete, temporary physical transformation, indistinguishable from the original.
WARNING: For those who like anime girls, please do not use this to transform into a cat-eared waifu. Attempting non-human forms will result in partial animal features and extended hospital stays. You have been warned.
Jude didn't dare use magical potions indiscriminately. He vividly remembered Hermione Granger accidentally adding cat hair to her potion and spending two months in the Hogwarts hospital wing. He had no intention of becoming a medical curiosity.
So he had asked Batman to find a suitable template. A real Gothamite whose life wouldn't be impacted by a temporary disappearance. Batman had delivered a thirty-year-old man who looked forty-five due to rough living.
His name was Okhoric Thor.
His credentials checked out perfectly. His ancestors were authentic Gotham Black Flag pirates from the 1800s. His gangster parents had died in a shootout, and Okhoric had followed in their unsuccessful footsteps until he was swept up in the current war. Batman had captured him and placed him in protective custody.
Okhoric had no immediate family, no friends, and no one to notice his absence. He was a ghost. A flesh suit Jude could wear perfectly.
Jude had chosen him the moment he saw the name. Okhoric Thor. It sounded like someone had mashed together "alcoholic" and "Thor"—like a drunk Norse god who had fallen on hard times. It was too perfect not to use.
With this borrowed identity, Jude had successfully infiltrated the Riddler's organization. He established his specialties: marksmanship, bicycles, and general perversion. As for his other abilities, Jude claimed they were gadgets stolen from his brief time working alongside Batman. He loudly insisted he had burned that bridge and joined the darkness.
The Riddler hadn't completely trusted him. "Okhoric Thor" reminded him uncomfortably of Officer Sharp. But he couldn't prove the connection. The disguise was flawless because it wasn't a disguise at all. So the Riddler accepted him, but watched him constantly.
"Bike Stripper," the Riddler's voice cut through the background noise of the base. "I have a mission for you."
Jude, who was currently playing a philosophical coin-guessing game with Two-Face, turned around. "What mission?"
"Recruitment. Or assassination. Your choice, really," the Riddler said clinically, pacing with his question-mark cane. "Facing the Joker requires maximum resources especially after that bastard manage to steal Solomon Grundy. The fewer cards we leave available for him, the stronger our advantage."
Jude nodded. "Who am I recruiting?"
The Riddler's lips curled into a thin smile. "A dispensable little character. A loser. A clown desperately seeking attention who manages to be disliked by absolutely everyone."
Jude waited through the extended character assassination, then sighed. "Nygma. I think your eloquence is amazing, but could you please stop being so breathless and dramatic and just tell me the name?"
The Riddler's jaw tightened. He did not appreciate the critique of his rhetorical style. "Kite Man," he said directly.
"That's it?" Jude spread his hands. "Just 'Kite Man'? Any background? Location?"
The Riddler turned away dismissively. "Get the intelligence yourself."
Mr. Zsasz, leaning against a wall covered in his own carved tally marks, smiled. "The Riddler doesn't pay you an absurdly high salary to just execute orders passively, kid," he said in a friendly, disturbing tone. "As for equipment, your pistol seem adequate. But if you prefer close work, I sell quality knives. Competitive prices."
Zsasz's bare upper body was completely covered in a dense, terrifying web of overlapping scar tissue. One mark for every person he'd murdered.
"That won't be necessary," Jude shook his head firmly. "I'm not good with knives. A gun suits my style."
Leaving the super-criminals behind, Jude went to gather intelligence on his target. Chuck Brown. The man he'd already saved multiple times. It was time to bring him in from the cold.
Kite Man flew through the sky above Gotham.
He wore a custom, lightweight green combat uniform designed for minimal drag. Extending from his compact backpack was a huge, professional-grade carbon fiber and ripstop nylon glider kite.
In the cloudless night sky, the wind did most of the work. Chuck steered effortlessly. When he shifted his weight, a compressed airflow spurted from the jet component of the backpack, altering his trajectory and providing maneuverability that pure kite flight couldn't offer.
Chuck had finally merged his two abandoned projects. The kite structure allowed for continuous, sustainable flight using natural thermals, while the jet component provided directional control. It was his own personal aircraft. His dream made tangible.
The wind had been his friend since childhood. He could read the currents and predict shifts intuitively, soaring nimbly through the night.
But he wasn't as happy as he'd been during his test flight with Batman.
Chuck looked down at the Park District. The war zone. At three hundred feet up, he didn't have to worry about small arms fire, but the view was devastating. Thick gray and black smoke wafted from collapsed buildings. A fishy wind carrying the metallic scent of blood blew through the destruction. The moon seemed darker tonight, as if the city's suffering had stained it red.
The myriad lights Chuck had seen just half a month ago had dimmed to mere slivers. Gotham had transformed into impenetrable fortresses, heavily guarded sentries, and kill zones.
This was the umpteenth time Chuck had flown this route, and with each circle, the weight of the tragedies below felt heavier. He remembered the news anchor, Frank, making his desperate argument: We have to choose a winner. Pick a side.
Chuck hesitated, circling on an updraft. He knew what both factions had done. The Riddler had poisoned his son; the Joker had forced him to jump from a tower wearing a fake bomb vest. Neither deserved to win. Besides, Chuck wasn't a soldier. He'd built this suit to fulfill a childhood dream of flight, not to become a combat asset in a gang war.
Deciding it was time to go home and forget what he'd seen, Chuck pulled the control lines. The huge kite began banking, orienting toward the safe zones.
At that exact moment, a glaring spot of vivid red amidst the gray rubble caught his attention.
It was a little boy in red clothes, maybe six or eight years old, sitting in the ruins of a residential building. The boy was holding a woman's hand. He wasn't moving, just gripping her fingers like a lifeline and crying, his face buried against her motionless arm.
Looking down from three hundred feet, Chuck inevitably thought of his own son, Charlie. He thought of his ex-wife, still trying to survive in this city. This could be them, destroyed while he flew overhead doing nothing.
Chuck's hands moved before his conscious mind finished processing.
The kite banked sharply. Slowly, in a controlled spiral, Chuck began descending toward that spot of red in the gray wasteland.