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"No matter what may happen... As long as you walk by my side... There shall be no enemy that can stand before us."
- Sosuke Aizen, (Bleach)
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<(Omniscient POV)>
"Calculating potential outcomes..." Cortana's voice inside Bruce's bat cave hummed from his bat computer as her internal processors whirred at speeds incomprehensible to humans, analyzing terabytes of data in milliseconds. In a few seconds, it was able to map out tens of thousands of conceivable scenarios, simulating millions of variables. Her current command was to completely eliminate the 4 cars of Riddler's gang rushing towards GCPD headquarters including all 18 people sitting inside the cars and currently, she was choosing the most effective way to do exactly that.
Cortana: "Three thousand five hundred and seventy-three different possibilities found. Plan number 78 is determined as the most effective. Executing plan number 78."
***
Suddenly, the city's traffic control system turned all the lights green for a motorcyclist heading towards the highway entrance ramp. The biker was a pizza delivery guy running late in his delivery for the third time of the day. Not wanting to anger his boss again, he sped up after seeing the series of green lights, thinking that lady luck had finally started to favor him. He had unknowingly become the first pawn in Cortana's plan.
As the biker merged onto the highway, he tried to take the shortcut he always took whenever he was late which was the next exit— going directly in the path of the Ridler's convoy.
***
Simultaneously, Cortana sent a text to the man operating a large mechanical arm at a construction site. The man who had kept his phone silent till now was immensely surprised at the sudden chime of notification coming from his phone. As a result, he lost his focus while operating the arm, causing the mechanical arm to go out of control and knock over a large container of black oil onto the road just before the exit ramp. As the container crashed against the ground, the oil quickly spread across the lanes, creating a slick, dangerous surface on the road.
***
Concurrently, Cortana also accessed the scheduling system of a nearby logistics company, analyzing the delivery route of a certain truck carrying some special volatile chemicals inside it. She sent an anonymous tip to the driver's boss about a potential gang that might be targeting to steal one of his trucks, prompting the boss to instantly call the driver and urge him to take another route in case the tip was genuine. The other route that he advised the driver to take was "coincidentally", the highway.
***
As Riddler's convoy approached the exit, the pizza delivery guy, now struggling to control his bike on the oil-slicked road, slid and crashed in front of them. Although the biker was fine, the accident still caused the lead car of the convoy to swerve and hit the guardrail with tremendous force. The sudden crash even forced the other cars to brake abruptly as well but the accident was nowhere enough to kill anyone.
However, just then, the truck carrying the volatile chemicals, which was also now on the highway thanks to Cortana's interference barreled towards the convoy at a high speed. The driver, seeing the chaos ahead, had tried to stop the truck, but the slick road made it impossible to do so. The truck driver, being quite experienced, knew what was going to happen the next moment and quickly jumped from the truck, safely landing on the road. He could feel he had a few bruised bones, but the jump had saved his life. The truck though was not so lucky as it jackknifed, its trailer swinging out and colliding directly with the last car—blocking any possible exit.
The sudden impact triggered a chain reaction. The volatile chemicals leaking from the delivery truck began to mix with the spilled black oil on the road and became a dangerous combination as the resultant solution instantly turned highly flammable. It only lacked a single spark that was required to ignite the entire mixture in a second.
***
<[A few minutes ago]>
"I don't understand, what type of joke is this? Did any of you send me this as a joke?" The Riddler asked the two subordinates sitting at the front of his car with an annoyed yet slightly anxious voice as he showed them the text he had received on his phone just now.
It was a few short lines of what looked like someone's meager attempt at writing a riddle.
'Some try to hide, and some try to cheat, but time will show, we will always meet.
I come with a cold embrace but can give you rest with a kiss on your face
'I am the end that starts the beginning, a spark that lights the fuse.
From the prince's mind, I come for you, your plans are now bound to lose.'
This "riddle" would have been quite interesting for him if he was a five-year-old but for the present him, this was just too easy. "How childish, of course, the answer is death. Heh, whoever wrote this must either be the biggest fool or my biggest fan." He mocked with a snort as he threw away his phone with displeasure evident in his voice.
However, he could not help but feel like he was missing something important here like there was another riddle inside the riddle, a clue that he wasn't able to understand. He couldn't admit it in front of his subordinates, but he was getting a bad feeling from the text, causing him to grow frustrated with every passing moment.
The message had come from an anonymous number that the Riddler couldn't recognize. This made him even more curious to know just who it was that wanted to play against him with riddles.
'Is it him? But he doesn't seem like the riddling sort, he looks like a guy who is more into jokes. And he himself told me not to contact him again till I was successful in blowing up GCPD and getting my hands on the entire paper trail of the Gotham Renewal Fund, so it shouldn't be him.' He muttered to himself with a thoughtful look.
Frustrated and unable to find answers to the questions in his mind, the Riddler angrily lit a cigarette. He was trying his best to quit but it was frustrating situations like these that made him want to have a drag to clear his head.
However, before he could have his first drag, his car suddenly crashed into the guardrail for seemingly no reason at all.
"What the hell? Which idiot was driving? I will hack you to death before canceling your driving license. Even my mother used to drive better than you." He yelled in anger as he opened the door of his car in a fit of rage before throwing the cigarette in his hand on the road in a careless manner.
The small lit tip of the cigarette was all it took for the newly brewed chemical combination to catch fire, instantly creating a massive explosion around the area that was further boosted by the explosives and firearms stored in each of the cars. The resulting fireball completely engulfed all four cars, ensuring a violent death to all the gang members present there including Riddler himself in what would later on be described as the biggest and most unfortunate Highway "accident" of the year.
Cortana's work was done. She had executed her command successfully. However, as an added precaution, she sent a final message to the traffic control system, returning all lights to normal and deleting all digital records of her manipulations. All the security footage near the incident zone was wiped clean while she also deleted all the texts she had sent from any official records.
This was all to cover her tracks and make this the perfect crime. Even if someone were to become suspicious of the entire incident later down the line, they would never have enough proof to link all these random events together. It would always remain just an unfortunate accident.
"Targets eliminated. Mission successful. Execution time: 6 minutes and 21 seconds."
***
"... That was just too good... I felt exactly like what I felt when I watched Final Destination for the first time." Bruce couldn't help but gulp as he saw the entire thing through his bracelet. "I feel bad for the truck driver and the pizza delivery guy who might lose their jobs because of this, so maybe have them win a lottery or something. But aside from those, it was perfect. A perfect crime with zero witnesses, zero evidence, and zero casualties." Bruce remarked in almost a whisper with an impressed look on his face.
However, as his car slowed down in front of a massive five-star hotel, a smirk slowly made its way to his handsome face. "Okay, maybe you were right, Cortana. This could very well be the trump card that we needed to win even in the most hopeless of situations. This could be useful... when used scarcely of course."
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