The only lesson humanity has learned from history is that humanity learns no lessons.
Three times.
After the third mission ended the same way the first two had, the Riddler finally accepted what he'd understood intellectually since the second one: the Bike Stripper was not a battlefield asset. Not against Batman. Not in any configuration.
The first mission, he'd already clocked Jude's instinct for strategic withdrawal at the first sign of things going wrong. The second time, with Deathstroke—that's when the nature of the problem changed. Because at that point it wasn't really about whether Jude could fight. It was about whether the Riddler could afford to be wrong.
He couldn't be beaten by a waste. He was the Riddler.
So he'd sent Jude out a second time to prove it, and lost Deathstroke. A third time, and lost the Scarecrow. The math was not improving, but the Riddler's investment had become principled. A man of his reputation did not get outmaneuvered by an operative who asked for his shoulder stabbed at dinner and considered this a successful evening.
He had to win this particular argument with reality.
The consolation, if it could be called that, was that Batman remained scrupulously fair. He hit both sides equally. Every super-criminal deployed into his path—from the Riddler's camp or the Joker's—came back in handcuffs or not at all. The one consistent exception was Jude, who had a talent for being somewhere else when the handcuffs came out.
In his study, the Riddler called in Two-Face and Killer Croc.
"I've stopped expecting Thor to fight," he said, dispensing with the usual framing. "Two-Face, Killer Croc —three blocks of the Upper West Side are currently held by the Ventriloquist alone. He's not a threat. You two take the position, and if Batman shows up, you can get out. Thor follows as communications only." He paused. "And when Thor starts running—don't wait for him. Use him as a distraction if it's useful. He's not a tactical unit."
"Then why keep sending him?" Two-Face asked, flipping his coin.
The Riddler's expression didn't change. "It's no longer a question of strategy. It's a question of dignity."
In other words: he mainly wanted to win.
Two-Face and Killer Croc took the order and left. As they reached the door, Jude fell into step behind them, and Killer Croc glanced sideways at the black-robed figure.
"By the way, Croc—how did you end up like this?"
Killer Croc didn't look at him. "None of your business."
Upper West Side. The three of them walked through empty streets in the direction of the Ventriloquist's territory.
Jude had tried to describe Killer Croc to himself at some point and arrived at a giant lizard that became a person and then halfway reconsidered. Close to two meters tall, three hundred kilograms, every surface covered in thick green scales with the particular texture of something genuinely prehistoric. The vertical pupils were beast-grade. The fangs were not decorative.
He was also, at this moment, eating a roasted lamb leg that Jude had handed him.
"Don't take it personally," Jude said. "I've been cooking the past few days. Might as well share."
Killer Croc's beast-pupil eyes rolled sideways—a motion that was slightly too anatomically wide-range to look human, but landed somewhere between annoyed and reluctant.
"I can eat anything," he said. "Your cooking doesn't matter."
"Croc, you look like a crocodile, but you're not one. Real crocodiles eat raw and don't notice the difference. People can tell good food from bad. You're still people enough for that."
Killer Croc turned to look at him directly. The vertical pupils focused.
"What if I told you I've eaten a person before?"
"I don't believe it."
"You should."
A massive scaled hand came down on Jude's shoulder. Not a grip—more of a demonstration. The weight alone was enough to make the point without the claws adding anything.
"That's not human skin," Killer Croc said. "That's not human strength."
"Ow—okay, okay, I understand—"
Killer Croc withdrew his hand and went back to the lamb leg. His teeth reduced the bone to small pieces without apparent effort and swallowed everything, cartilage included. "If you've watched me eat, you know a lamb leg and a human hand aren't different problems for me."
"Sure," Jude said, rubbing his shoulder. He pulled on a disposable glove with his other hand and extracted a steak and a bottle of red wine from the paper bag he'd been carrying. No silver fork. No goblet. He wasn't at Wayne Manor. "But having the instincts of an animal and having the mind of one are two different things. I've been watching you for two weeks, and I haven't seen you eat any people. I have seen you reading."
Two-Face made a sound—half amusement, half contempt—and kept the coin moving through his fingers. "Reading philosophy. A former wrestler and street criminal with an alligator tail reading Kierkegaard. I spent twenty minutes wondering if I was hallucinating."
"You are hallucinating," Killer Croc said. "You're Two-Face. The person talking to me right now is Harvey Dent, who might be someone else in thirty seconds. I'm the beast. You're the madman. At least I know which one I am."
Jude looked at Killer Croc with interest. "Former wrestler? Underground circuit?"
"Circus." The word came out flat. "Haly's Circus. It was my first job. My only legal job."
A beat. Jude waited.
"You think a man who looks like this gets hired anywhere else?"
"Fair point." Jude considered it. "Family?"
Killer Croc kept walking. The lamb leg was almost finished.
"No family."
Of course he has family, Jude thought, reading the pause before the answer.
His mother had died in the delivery room. His father had looked at the infant Waylon Jones and found in him something he couldn't stand to have made. By now, Waylon could barely reconstruct their faces from memory—they'd faded the way things fade when you stop needing them to be real.