Batman moved faster than Jude's warning.
He was already turning toward the Tweedle brothers when the words left Jude's mouth—head swinging, threat assessed, priority calculated in under a second. He scooped the Scarecrow off the ground and ran, putting distance between the source of the gas and the two men still lying in the street.
It wasn't enough.
The new formula was faster than the previous one. Vivid emerald green, almost solid-looking in its density, it bloomed outward from the Scarecrow's shattered wrist and rolled across the pavement before rising—spreading into the brothers' faces before Batman had covered ten feet. Both of them inhaled. Their already-compromised expressions went somewhere worse.
Batman stopped. Set the Scarecrow down.
The Scarecrow lay on the pavement and breathed carefully through what remained of his composure. His arm was in pieces. The pain was significant. He looked up at Batman and smiled the smile of a man who has concluded that his situation has, against all probability, improved.
"You want the antidote," he said. "Of course you do. You want to save them." He shifted slightly, finding a position that hurt less. "It's simple, Batman. Let me go, and I'll tell you where the antidote is. I don't have it on me—you can search if you like, it won't be there. So this is the situation: you let me walk, I give you the location, the Tweedle brothers live." His voice found its groove, the lecture cadence that came naturally to him. "Or you take me in—Scarecrow defeated by Batman again, very satisfying for you I'm sure—and those two die. Your choice. In other words, your hands." His gaze moved to Batman's face, steady despite everything. "So choose. Let me go, or kill two criminals yourself. Or perhaps the lives of criminals don't factor into your accounting?"
While he talked, his eyes cut twice toward the alley—fast, sidelong, involuntary. He was looking for Jude. For his backup. For the one variable Batman wouldn't be tracking, the dark figure in the shadows who might create enough uncertainty to open an exit.
The alley was quiet. Nothing moved in it.
Batman did not turn to look.
He picked the Scarecrow up by the ankles and hit him twice, precisely, and the snapping sounds were distinct in the night air. The Scarecrow's eyes rolled back. The pavement caught him.
Batman straightened up and reached into his tactical belt. Two candies—one red, one white.
"Milk candy neutralizes the toxin," he said. Not a question, but almost.
A figure stepped out of the alley, signal jammer in hand, black robe unmistakable.
"Right," Jude said. "Fruit candy handles physical injury. Wrong candy for this situation." He reached into his robe and tossed three white ones across. Batman caught them without looking. "And go easy on them. If the exposure isn't life-threatening, don't burn a candy—they're not cheap."
Batman filed the questions that immediately occurred to him—cost, source, formula, scalability, whether Jude held the recipe—and went to the Tweedle brothers first. He got the candies into them efficiently. The Clue Master, still curled on the pavement a few feet away, received no candy, because the Clue Master's condition, while unpleasant, was not going to kill him.
Jude, meanwhile, had walked over to the Scarecrow and was studying the damage with genuine curiosity.
"That kick," he said. "I'm trying to count the broken ribs from here. Did you actually want to kill him?"
"I put two hundred and ten pounds behind it," Batman said. "That's all."
"Mm." Jude looked at the Scarecrow's chest. "Those are different things, but okay."
Early the next morning.
"Boss. The Bike Stripper's back."
The Riddler heard Gregor's voice and drew his pistol—the left hand, since the right was still wrapped—and walked to the meeting hall at a pace that communicated intent without quite becoming running.
Two minutes.
The remaining super-criminals were already there when he arrived. They looked at Jude in the center of the floor with the resigned recognition of people encountering a familiar pattern.
Jude looked, as always, entirely fine. The black robe wasn't even dusty. No blood, no bullet holes, not a wrinkle. He stood with his hands at his sides and the general air of a man who has completed an uneventful errand.
The Riddler raised the pistol.
"Where's Scarecrow?"
"Captured by Batman."
The room exchanged glances. Not shock, exactly. Something more like the quiet acknowledgment of a recurring event.
The Riddler lowered the pistol slightly. Not all the way—he kept it at a level that communicated ongoing intent. "Thor." He made himself speak slowly. "I'm running low on patience. You were assigned a reconnaissance mission. Batman defeated Scarecrow. Why were you fighting Batman during a reconnaissance mission instead of doing the sensible thing and running?"
"We ran into the Clue Master and the Tweedle brothers in the East District."
"The Joker's people."
"Also there to investigate. We couldn't just leave them."
"And then Batman arrived."
"More or less."
"You had five people. One Batman. You've seen what he can do—but five against one is still five against one."
"Boss." Jude's voice took on the earnest quality of someone providing a careful technical explanation. "Scarecrow doesn't distinguish between allies and the enemies in a fight. He treated us the same as them. I asked him directly if I could help, and he told me I was useless and to stay out of it. I can't force my way into a situation where my own teammate is gassing the area." He paused. "And the reconnaissance mission still needed completing. Once Batman had them occupied, the Upper West Side was completely clear. So I went."
The Riddler stared at him.
"That," he said, "is your allies."
"Boss, we're villains." Jude's tone remained earnest—aggressively, almost clinically earnest. "We can't afford sentiment. Look at the record: if I'd stayed when the Kite Man mission went wrong, Batman would have taken me too. I wouldn't have been available for the Deathstroke missions. I wouldn't have been at the dinner. I wouldn't have done tonight's reconnaissance." He spread his hands. "Without me, those four get captured regardless. With me, one person survives and brings back intelligence. That's a net positive."
The Riddler put one hand over his face.
Around the room, the super-criminals were doing the math and arriving at the same uncomfortable conclusion the Riddler had just reached: the argument was technically coherent. Infuriating, but coherent. Which somehow made it worse—if it were simply wrong, it could simply be dismissed. Instead it sat there, logically intact, radiating a specific kind of shamelessness that didn't quite fit any existing category.
The Riddler took his hand off his face.
"Finish the reconnaissance report," he said. "Then get out. You won't be assigned to any more active missions. From here on, your job is to follow the team and relay intelligence. That's it. That's all you're worth."
"I have no objection," Jude said.
"The report."
"Joker's camp was quiet—standard guards, normal patrol routes, nothing unusual. However, three of their super-criminals are now unaccounted for: the Clue Master, and the Tweedle brothers." A brief pause. "Word is they were in the East District tonight on reconnaissance."
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