Bang!
"No wonder when I sent people to track Lupin the Third that day, he not only shook off all surveillance but also vanished into thin air afterward. We searched all over Gotham and couldn't find him."
Penguin muttered under his breath, his eyes narrowing behind the polished monocle as he stared at the crumpled newspaper still clenched tightly in his gloved fist.
The headlines screamed about Harvey Dent's courtroom meltdown and the phantom thief who had orchestrated the entire spectacle. The paper was already creased and torn from how many times he had gripped it.
"So he was Kaitou Kid all along," he continued, voice low and dangerous. "With a disguise technique similar to Clayface's, evading surveillance would not be difficult at all."
That day, Lupin III had walked into the Iceberg Lounge with that infuriating grin and used the promise of joining Penguin's ranks, along with helping perfect the supposed flaws in the casino's internal hidden mechanisms, as leverage to pry Two-Face's location out of him.
Penguin had assigned a discreet team to shadow the newcomer.
Not just to stop him from bolting with any secrets, but also because he genuinely did not trust the man's motives regarding Two-Face.
If Lupin planned to cross Dent, sell the information to a rival, or worse, start a war between territories, the watchers would intervene immediately to protect their employer's interests.
A conscientious boss always covered his bases!
Lupin III, of course, showed zero gratitude for the hospitality.
The moment he stepped out of the casino's ornate entrance, he slipped away. The tail reports that filtered back to Penguin were almost laughable in their helplessness: one second the man was casually strolling down the rain-slicked sidewalk, coat collar turned up against the Gotham drizzle, the next he was simply gone. No cab, no alley turn, no crowd to lose himself in. The city had swallowed him whole.
For the next few days, there was utter silence from the ACE Chemical Plant. No explosions, no sightings, no bodies fished out of the Narrows. Penguin had quietly concluded that Lupin had either been stupid enough to confront Two-Face head-on and paid the price, or smart enough to realize the danger and abandon the whole foolish errand.
As a reasonable businessman, Penguin told himself he would not lose sleep over the defection. Everyone had their own ambitions, after all.
At least the casino's security mechanisms had been "repaired" under Lupin's hands, and every dollar the man had won at the tables remained safely in the house's coffers.
Not a single penny had vanished. Giving up Two-Face's hideout in exchange for that? It hardly felt like a loss.
At least, that was what Penguin had believed... until yesterday!!
One of his subordinates had returned unexpectedly.
This particular man was the engineer who had personally designed the casino's intricate hidden mechanisms years earlier. He had been away for months overseeing construction of a new Iceberg Club branch in Blüdhaven.
The moment he heard rumors that his masterpiece contained exploitable flaws, panic set in. Fearing that Penguin would fire him on the spot, or worse, have him quietly removed from the payroll in a more permanent sense, he dropped everything and rushed back to Gotham.
What he found when he inspected the systems was... nothing.
Every gear, every pressure plate, every concealed panel was exactly as he had left it. Not a wire had been touched, not a single calibration altered.
The so-called repairs by Lupin III had been theater. A perfect illusion of improvement.
Only then did the full truth crash over Penguin like ice water.
The "flaws" had never existed. They were a fabrication, a clever lie designed for one purpose only: to trick him into revealing Two-Face's location at the ACE Chemical Plant.
When combined with the Kaitou Kid headlines and Harvey Dent's rambling, detailed confession now plastered across every newspaper in Gotham, the picture became painfully clear.
"In all of Gotham, aside from Batman, this is the first time someone has dared to make a fool of me!"
Penguin could no longer keep the fury from twisting his normally placid features. His monocle caught the chandelier light and flashed like a blade. The cigar he had been about to light trembled slightly in his fingers before he crushed it in the ashtray.
The subordinate who had delivered the latest intelligence report stood rigid, head bowed, cold sweat sliding down his neck and soaking the stiff collar of his shirt. He did not dare speak. He barely dared breathe. The boss's rage had a way of seeking targets, and right now he felt very much like one.
"This Kaitou Kid," Penguin snarled, voice dropping to a venomous hiss, "I... I want him dead!"
He slammed the balled-up newspaper onto the mahogany desk. The impact cracked through the private office like a gunshot, sending a few loose papers fluttering.
"Hmm.. Killing him won't be easy."
A grim, gravelly voice cut in from the doorway.
The heavy door slid open with a soft hydraulic hiss, revealing a tall figure framed in shadow. The man stepped inside just far enough for the light to catch the edges of his dark coat and the faint gleam of something metallic at his belt.
"Huh? You?" Penguin's eyebrows rose. In an instant the raw anger smoothed away, replaced by his usual mask of urbane composure.
He straightened his bow tie with a practiced flick, leaned back in the high-backed leather chair, and gestured toward the empty seat opposite the desk. "My my~ We have a rare visitor today."
"You're probably not here to play a few rounds at the tables. So tell me, why are you looking for me?"
"The one looking for you isn't me," the figure replied. His voice came out low and deliberately distorted, as though filtered through cheap electronics. "It's my employer."
He paused, letting the silence stretch just long enough to be uncomfortable.
"He, like you, harbors a deep hatred for Kaitou Kid. Because of that, he plans to cooperate with you to kill him."
"Is that so?" Penguin's fingers drummed once on the desk, slow and deliberate. "And who exactly is your employer?"
"Someone you know well." The shadowed man tilted his head slightly. "The Riddler."
Penguin let out a short, dry laugh that held no humor. "Isn't he still locked up in Arkham? How can he cooperate with me from a padded cell? If you're here to ask me to help him break out, you can forget it. I'm not in the mood for charity cases."
"Un-ha.. It's simpler than that." The messenger took one step closer, voice still unnaturally flat. "He has already devised a plan. As long as you follow it precisely, you can lure Kaitou Kid straight into a deadly trap..."
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