Countdown (11 page)

Jimmy wondered if that was true, or if Robin was just being polite.

“Let’s not have an
American Idol
moment,” the Boy Wonder said sympathetically. “You’re a photographer, and a damn good one. Don’t discount the impact you make on people’s lives.” He shook Jimmy’s hand. “Stick with what you’re good at.”

Jimmy appreciated Robin’s attempts to soften the blow, but he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet. “No, Robin. All I want to do is help people.”

Even if he wasn’t cut out to be a super hero, he knew he’d been given these powers for a reason. One way or another, he was going to find out what they were for ... or die trying.

30 AND COUNTING.

' GOTHAM CITY.

Jin
earsplitting explosion greeted Mary Marvel’s return to the mortal plane. Descending from the night sky, she saw flames and smoke erupting from the uptown branch of the Gotham National Bank. The blistering heat from the fire could be felt even high above the city. Thick black smoke filled her nostrils. A glance at a clock tower informed her that it was nearly three in the morning.
Thank goodness,
she thought. At this hour, it was unlikely that anyone had been inside the bank when it blew up.
Probably no need to search for casualties.

Sirens heralded the approach of police cars and fire trucks. Assuming that the authorities could cope with the blaze on their own, Mary scanned the scene from the air, looking for some clue as to the origin of the explosion. Foul play seemed like a safe bet; banks seldom exploded on their own, especially in Gotham City.

She wasn’t the only one taking in the show. Her eyes lit up as she spied a lanky figure watching the fireworks from the rooftop of a five-story building across the street from the burning bank. Embossed purple question marks, sewn into the fabric of a dapper green suit, tie, and bowler hat, immediately identified the onlooker as Batman’s longtime nemesis Edward Nigma, aka the Riddler. He lowered a pair of high-powered binoculars. A purple domino mask failed to conceal his avid interest in the spectacular conflagration. Intent upon the fire, he appeared unaware of the black-clad super heroine spying on him from above.

“Well, well!” She chuckled to get his attention. “What have we here?” After her infuriating reunion with Billy at the Rock of Eternity, she welcomed the opportunity to take out her frustration on a deserving target. “Explosions, alarms, and one big-name Gotham bad guy just begging for an ass-kicking!”

To her slight disappointment, the Riddler appeared unruffled by her arrival. “I would agree with your assessment, young lady,” he said glibly, while brazenly attempting to look up her skirt, “although it appears I should make you aware of certain facts before you—
hey!"

Swooping down from the sky, she nabbed him in midsentence. His bowler hat went flying, exposing receding brown hair, as she grabbed on to his collar and plucked him off the rooftop. Startled, he dropped his binoculars, which tumbled downward while she carried him high up into the air, hundreds of feet above his former perch. The lost spy-glasses crashed loudly onto the roof below.

“Before you jump to conclusions and turn me into street pizza, my dear,” he said calmly, despite the fact that he was currently dangling from a great height, “although I sincerely hope that such a virtuous Girl Scout as yourself would never do such a thing, I must inform you that, as a duly licensed private investigator, I don’t
commit
crimes any longer. I
solve
them.”

“What are you saying?” Mary asked, irked by his persistently chipper attitude. ‘'That you’ve
reformed!”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
That’s what Black Adam said too. Before he pounded me into a coma.

The Riddler stuck to his story. “Ask Batman if you don’t believe me.”

“I don’t,” she said confidently. “I saw you. You were at the crime scene
before
the police.” She gave him a good shaking. “Riddle your way out of that one!”

“It’s no mystery,” he insisted. “Like you, I heard the explosion and came to investigate.” Twisting in her grasp, he pointed down at the sidewalk far below. “Look! See that muddy trail leading away from the bank? It will most assuredly lead us to whoever’s
really
behind this outrage.”

Mary descended to the rooftop to get a closer look. To her annoyance, she saw that a trail of thick brown glop did indeed stretch from the rear of the bank to the mouth of a secluded alley a few blocks away. Given that there were no parks or gardens nearby, the large quantity of mud looked distinctly out of place. Maybe the Riddler was actually onto something.

Shrugging free of her grip, he dropped back onto his feet. “I was just about to follow it before your timely arrival,” he continued, retrieving his hat from where it had fallen before. In his emerald outfit, he looked like a tall, skinny leprechaun. “What do you say, Mary Marvel? Care to play girl detective?”

Mary scowled. She had been looking forward to teaching this irritating clown a lesson. But what if he was telling the truth, and the real culprit was getting away as they spoke? “Okay,” she said reluctantly, her hands upon her hips. “You’ve bought yourself five more unbruised minutes, but don’t expect me to trust you, Riddler.” Taking hold of his shoulder, she dived off the roof and zoomed toward the alley in question. His terrified yelp gave her a bit of satisfaction before they touched down onto the grimy floor of the alley. “Once a criminal, always a criminal.” He recovered his composure far too quickly for her liking. “You don’t believe people can change, little miss Mary?” He scoped her out by the glow of the streetlights.

“Then answer me this: What used to be bright and sunny, but is now black all over?”

She knew he was alluding to her recent makeover. “Point taken,” she conceded. “But consider yourself warned. I might not be such a Girl Scout anymore.”

“I’ll forgo asking you for cookies, then,” he quipped. “But about your new look, Mary, I have to say I’m not really a big fan.” He looked down his nose at her sleek black dress and boots. “A little too Dark Knight for my tastes.”    .

His cocky demeanor still nettled Mary, but she tried not to take it personally. Years of dealing with Batman had probably rendered the Riddler immune to intimidation; he couldn’t have lasted long in Gotham otherwise. “Hey, there’s something I don’t need,” she shot back. “Fashion tips from a goofball in a green derby.”

' * “No need to get defensive,” Nigma chided her. Bowing at the waist, he stepped aside to let Mary lead the way into the murky alley. “Ladies first.”

Mary suspected that the Riddler’s chivalrous gesture had less to with courtesy than with his own cowardly sense of self-preservation.
Sure,
she thought,
hide behind the bulletproof girl.

With the police and firefighters still preoccupied with containing the fire, they had the telltale smears of mud all to themselves. As she marched deeper into the alley, leaving the streetlights behind, she wondered why someone would blow up a bank on purpose. To make a political statement, or just to destroy all evidence of a bank heist? And what was the deal with all this mud anyway? There weren’t any mucky footsteps on the ground, only scattered clumps of slick brown goo.

“Intriguing,” the Riddler observed, tagging along behind her. “Most intriguing.”

Mary had no idea what he was finding so fascinating. Looking around, she didn’t see any obvious clues, just a dirty alley full of rusty trash cans, empty liquor bottles,

gainsvnoifH 8?

and a soggy cardboard box that was probably some wino’s home address. Cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, and beer cans littered the uneven pavement. Obscene graffiti and gang signs were spray-painted onto sooty brick walls. Rickety fire escapes climbed toward the rooftops, but nobody seemed to be using them to make a getaway. A stray cat hissed at Mary from the shadows. The less said about the smell, the better.

A glimpse of the Bat-Signal, shining brightly through the smoke-filled sky, prompted her to wonder why Batman was nowhere to be seen.
Probably dealing with, some bigger emergency,
she guessed.
Maybe with the Justice league.
For all she knew, Gotham’s premier vigilante was helping the League fend off an alien invasion at the moment.
I suppose not even Batman can be everywhere at once.

''
Disappointingly, the trail led to a literal dead end. A high concrete wall, topped by concertina wire, blocked their path. A sizable heap of mud, large enough to fill a wheelbarrow or two, was deposited at the base of the wall. Bats Suck! was scrawled on the dirty concrete. Jokers Rule! Mary could easily fly over or smash through the barrier, of course, but that wasn’t the point. Their quarry had given them the slip.

“End of the line,” the Riddler remarked, stating the obvious. He slipped past Mary to examine the mound of mud. Extracting a customized green and purple pencil from his pocket, he poked the gunk experimentally. “Although, you know, I’m beginning to suspect that this isn’t actually mud at all.”

Mary eyed him suspiciously. Was he just stringing her along for some reason? “Okay, Sherlock, what is it?”

Before he could answer, the pencil was sucked from his grasp. He jumped back from the quivering sludge as it suddenly came to life before their eyes. The amorphous muck rose up from the pavement to take on a vaguely humanoid form. Beady red eyes ogled Mary from a crude approximation of a face. A pair of pulsating slits provided a mere suggestion of a nose. The mouth was just an open gash beneath the nostrils. Rows of jagged ceramic shards gnashed together like teeth. Broken pieces of pencil were spat onto the ground. A phlegmy voice answered Mary’s question.

“Clay!”

Of course!
Mary kicked herself for not figuring it out earlier. The being before her was one of Batman’s most freakish foes, a malleable mass of malevolence that had once been an unscrupulous treasure hunter named Matt Hagen. Now better known as ...

“Clayface!”

“You bet, honey!” the villain gurgled. Drawing the excess sludge back into his person, he expanded until he towered over both Mary and the Riddler. The self-proclaimed sleuth scurried behind Mary, shamelessly using her as a shield. Clayface oozed forward menacingly. ‘Too bad you and Nigma couldn’t leave well enough alone!”

Clayface surged at them like a tidal wave, engulfing them in a flood of viscous muck, which clung to Mary like a sticky mixture of quicksand and wet cement. The loathsome avalanche tore the Riddler away from her. He flailed wildly, struggling to keep his head above the suffocating clay. “Mary!” he squealed like the rat that he was. “Where are you?”

“Here!” The squishy clay was everywhere, in her hair, on her face, enveloping her entire body. She swallowed a mouthful by mistake, and gagged in disgust. Clayface tasted worse than the mud pies she had crafted as a child. She coughed up the gritty sludge. “I’m here ... and I’m not happy!”

That was putting it mildly.
First dead babies,
she thought,
now this!
The clay hardened around her like concrete, squeezing her tightly. Wet goo seeped into her gloves and boots. It felt cold and damp against her skin.
When did bad guys get so gross?

“You should have stayed outta Gotham, babe!” Clay-

ElffllfBaWM 89

face gloated in her ear. “You ain’t dirty enough for this town!”

“Is that so?” Mary said, her temper flaring. “We’ll see about that!”

Enough was enough. Exerting her strength, she broke loose of Clayface’s slimy embrace, sending broken chunks of clay in all directions. Bellowing wetly, the monster hurled a glutinous fist at her, but she deftly evaded the punch so that it splattered uselessly against the wall behind her. Taking to the air, she yanked the Riddler free as well and tossed him, none too gently, out of harm’s way. The empty cardboard shelter cushioned his landing, which Mary figured was probably more than he deserved. “Atta girl, Mary!” he cheered her on from the sidelines. “Don’t worry. I’ve got your back!”

Yeah, right,
Mary thought.

* She didn’t waste another moment on her worthless partner. There was a bigger mess that needed to be cleaned up right now.

“Think you can sucker punch Mary Marvel, Clay-face?” Calling upon the speed of Hera, as well as Isis’s divine mastery of the winds, she flew circles around Clay-face at faster and faster speeds, until she generated a whirling cyclone that sucked up every last clump of the monster’s gelatinous substance, along with any nearby trash. Clayface raged inside the spinning vortex, but his profane threats were drowned out by the roaring whirlwind, which lifted him off the ground and sent him rocketing into orbit. “Wrong!”

Slowing to a more leisurely pace, Mary dismissed the turbulent winds. A canvas bag crashed to the ground in the tornado’s wake. Coins, greenbacks, and expensive jewelry spilled onto the floor of the alley, immediately attracting the Riddler’s attention. “Case closed, Mary!” he chortled gleefully. “I’ve uncovered the loot!”

“And I shot Clayface into outer space,” she replied, unimpressed by her partner’s dubious achievement. She landed nimbly on the pavement and wiped a few leftover traces of Clayface from her face and costume. Cut off from the monster’s animating intelligence, the remaining clumps of clay flaked off her easily. One of her new outfit’s many magical properties, she had come to realize, was its preternatural ability to repel dirt and other stains.
Guess the gods want me looking my best.

“Outer space?” the Riddler parroted. He glanced up at the heavens. Mary noticed that the billowing black smoke was already beginning to disperse; apparently Gotham’s Bravest already had the fire under control. “A bit extreme, don’t you think?”

“Was it?” The question gave her pause; to be honest, she had hurled Clayface into orbit without even thinking about it. “Was that too much?” She felt a twinge of guilt. Despite his monstrous appearance, Matt Hagen wasn’t actually a soulless demon like Pharyngula, just a bizarrely ' ftiutated human being. Maybe she should have gone easier on him?